Posted by Gabe on August 5, 2009 under Ask Gabe, Twitter, Twitter for Beginners | 
This is the second in the Ask Gabe series. A very good question came back to me posed by @DaveWebbBC:
@KidsAreHeroes Hi Im new to twitter, how do you manage conversations in the midst of 100s of tweets from random people?
Ok Dave, there are two parts to this. By your tweet I see you have learned to preface your tweet with the @ sign followed by the intended Twitter ID. This is the proper way to do this. I received this in my Replies/Mentions folder (as do you when you get tweets directed at you). Many newbies don’t see this folder. When you open Twitter from your browser, on the right sidebar you see “Home”. Underneath that you see your Twitter ID and under that is the Direct Messages folder. Click on your Twitter ID and you will see only tweets that are either directed at you or mention you in the tweet. What may be confusing is that you also see them in your main Twitter stream. So the basic answer is to check your Replies/Mentions folder – this will be separate from your main stream that has all those other random tweets.
Now once you get a little more comfortable and daring, you can install a product such as Tweetdeck that provides columns for different folders. Your Replies/Mentions folder is viewable at the same time as your main Twitter stream. You can even see your direct messages concurrently as well. And the nice thing about Tweetdeck is that it automatically refreshes itself, wheras you keep having to manually refresh your browser to see new tweets.
Now, one problem occurs when you get a response from someone who you directed a question quite some time ago and you can’t remember what you asked. Or maybe you just commented on something they said. They come back to you days later assuming you had just asked the question. That happened to me yesterday. There are a number of ways to do this, but the only tool I could find that worked properly was TweeTree. This tool shows the threads in conversations. Go to Tweetree.com and log in to Twitter. Look at your Mentions folder. You should see the conversations that you have been having.
Now there should be two other resources that can help. Specifically Advanced Twitter Search and TweetGrid.com. You can add boolean operators to Tweetgrid – for example to see conversations between you and me enter: DaveWebbBC AND KidsAreHeroes – note the capitalized AND. Unfortunately this isn’t working now in either case. I think that both use the Twitter Search API and my guess is that something is wrong with it at the time of this writing. I was unable to find the tweets from @DaveWebbBC to @KidsAreHeroes. If this works for someone else or if someone knows something I don’t please enlighten. UPDATE: As I suspected, at least according to this post, the Twitter search engine is indeed broken. That’s probably why it is no longer available directly from their home page. What you were trying to do will be much simpler once it is fixed.
UPDATE 8/25/09: I was working with the aforementioned tool Tweetdeck just now and I tripped over something that is definitely related to this. Tweetdeck has different columns that you can set up. One is the Mentions/Replies column. As I stated it will automatically update according to how often you have it set and you can see other tweets as well. If you get a reply (as opposed to just a mention), there will be text at the bottom of the tweet that will say “..in reply to..”. If you click on that it will show you the conversation you had with that person. I just discovered it so I have yet to determine its real value, but it seems like it might be very helpful.
UPDATE 8/6/09: I saw this link today for Twitter Conversation and Communication Tools. Looks like there are several more tools to help. Haven’t tried them all, so when I do I will come back and update again. Here is the link.
Hope all this helps… :)
Posted by Gabe on under Twitter, Twitter for Beginners |
This is going to sound really nerdy but I have looked forward to Fridays because of #followfriday on Twitter. “Follow Friday” is the practice of recommending your favorite tweeps to other people to follow. (See more about it and how it got started via @mashable here.) This is a great concept – at least in theory. There is no better form of flattery on Twitter than for people to recommend you to others. But I must be honest. I do not look forward to Fridays like I used to. I see it more as a chore than a blessing now, at least as to how it applies to Twitter and here’s why:
1) The List. People cram as many names as they possibly can into one tweet. It is so bad that the #followfriday hash tag has been reduced to #ff to get more names on it. There is no reason given as to why we should be following these people. I guess what we are supposed to do is blindly click on all of them and follow them??
2) The RT. People who are given #followfriday shout-outs want other people to know they were given them, so they retweet these lists. You’re so vain – you probably think this song is about you.
3) The Requests. I actually received an email from someone that said, “I am going to give you a #followfriday shout-out tomorrow. Please give me one too!” When he did and I didn’t return it, he emailed me again telling me that he gave me a #followfriday shout-out. (By the way his follower count was 147.)
4) The Numbers. Have you ever looked at someone’s profile on a Friday and saw nothing but #FF lists? I fail to see what is accomplished by this. This is becoming more and more prevalent and is starting to amount to no more than spam.
5) The Thank-You’s. Regardless of the intent (or lack of) in a #followfriday mention, I feel obligated to thank people for them, even if I am one of 100 people they have recommended. I really do want to thank the people who have tweeted a “genuine” #followfriday to me. This gets harder and harder to do as I get more mentions, especially when I have a rule that I don’t thank people who have retweeted their own mention where I happen to be included.
Now I know what you are thinking – that I am biting the hand that feeds me, that I am whining about getting mentioned – all that may be true. And make no mistake I am truly grateful to the people that recommend me through their hearts. But if #followfriday was accomplishing what its originator intended, I would have a huge onrush of followers every Friday due to the number of mentions I get. This simply is not the case. As a matter of fact, I get no more of a noticeable following on Fridays as I do other days. And what that tells me is that people do not pay attention to these lists. Why would they? It’s just a long list of people with no reason why they have been recommended. The scary thing is that this concept is being propagated in a hash tag called #charitytuesday and I even received a #followwednesday shout-out this morning. The other sad thing I noticed is that on Fridays my “Mentions” folder is full of #followfriday lists and no real replies. People are spending all of their time creating these lists instead of connecting with people.
Now does that mean #followfriday should be done away with? No. I would just hope that people would go back to recommending one or two people at a time and giving us the reason. @DannyBrown has joined the trend of listing his #followfriday mentions on his blog. (Notice I picked the one where he mentions me – self-serving I know..) He keeps the list short and recommends different people every week. This is an excellent way to flatter and thus engage people. I still think Mr. Tweet is a great resource. This can be done any day and it is a great way to give props to the people you really love to follow. The beauty is that you can only mention one at a time, so you must give thought as to why you are following them. @bkmacdaddy seems to share my opinion. He has written a post how to use Mr. Tweet instead of #followfriday.
On Fridays I still partake in #followfriday but I try and recommend one person at a time. If I recommend several I do include a reason. Here is an example of one I did last week.
I know I might get some flak on this one but please feel free to dish it out. Convince me that #followfriday is still a wonderful thing on Twitter. You might make me look forward to Fridays again.
UPDATE 8/7/09 12:28PM EST Well #followfriday is just a little over half done for me and I must say either I am noticing it more or we did have a bit of an impact. I have seen several #followfriday dedications today that were very warm and genuine, and only mentioned a small amount of people. I did click through and follow those that were recommended. I find this much more productive when someone convinces me why I should follow just with a few kind adjectives. Keep them coming, people!
UPDATE 9/4/09: At the risk of appearing extremely self-serving I want to bring attention to a particular #followfriday mention I got this morning. It was delivered by @JonAston. (See what he wrote here.) This is one of the best recommendations I have ever gotten. In my opinion this is the way to recommend people. It gave me such a good feeling I had to write about it. This is a reflection of why you should follow Jon.
UPDATE 11/13/09: I saw that last week my friend @JohnHaydon officially declared that #followfriday was dead because of Twitter’s new lists feature. I also saw that @AlexKaris has a Twitter list called FollowFriday. This seems to make sense, doesn’t it? I haven’t fully come around yet when it comes to the new Twitter lists. I still have a bad taste in my mouth because of what happened to me recently. But I do see their convenience. To date I have created just one list including all our heroes. I am not sure which list I should create next. When you follow lots of people it becomes more difficult to create them in the first place. And who do you offend when you leave people off your “Great-Tweeters” list? I thought about creating a Follow Friday list too, but in my eyes that’s no different than creating a long tweet for them (except for the added convenience of following them all, and not having to type in the lists each week). I still have yet to follow someone else’s list because I don’t really know who is in them. Maybe I would follow some of them but not all. So I guess I will continue with my #followfriday routine and just mention a few each week giving a good reason for each. After all, that is, as I understand it, the spirit in which it was created in the first place.
How are Twitter lists working for you?
