Today I started an experiment on Twitter. I have been a Twitter user for a long time now and have amassed a nice little following with more than 5000 followers. One concern I have had since I have passed more than a few hundred followers has been on how to communicate. Most people consider Twitter a ‘communication’ medium. Communication assumes two way conversations.
That, however, is not how I use Twitter.
At The Next Web Conference Chris Sacca explained the audience that he felt responsible for his audience. He felt compelled to write funny, interesting and thought provoking messages. He didn’t want to bore them. I agree and always do my best to entertain and inspire my audience with every tweet I post.
So how do you talk to a lot of people AND reply to each and every one with a personal reply? Sure, the reply itself is very important to the receiver, but how interesting is it for the other readers? I’m aiming for 100% interestingness in my tweets. How about if I slip down to 50% if only 5 out of 5 tweets are original and the rest would be replies? Or how about 1 in 10?
As an experiment I decided to set-up a new Twitter account which I will use ONLY to reply to users. My personal account is @Boris and my ‘reply’ account is @BorisReplies. My strategy is going to be to reply to every reply or retweet to @Boris on @BorisReplies.
I am ALSO going to reply on @Boris sometimes but only if I think my reply is interesting to everyone else who follows me on @Boris.
Some people have told me that this is NOT how Twitter works, that this is contrary to what Twitter stands for, that it will confuse people and isn’t ‘right’. My answer: nobody, not even Twitter, knows what is ‘Right’ for Twitter. We just don’t. Experimenting with different uses is good and will lead us to new and interesting ways of using Twitter.
I will do a follow-up post in about a week or so with the results. Let me know what you think about this experiment by tweeting to @Boris and I will retweet to you via @BorisReplies.
Interesting experiment. I only expect that it’s hard to use different accounts in one ‘wave of communication’. Which tool do you use to Tweet?
No I’m very aware of that change. I think it is an improvement but the effect is the same. If I reply to someone else, even when you follow that person too, that tweet is generally less interesting for you.
You DO know, that since a month or so, only your followers, who ALSO follow the people you are replying to, are seeing the @reply in their stream?
Because this means that the reply could be of use, or interesting, etc to those followers. For the rest of the replies, we have DM’s, i think.
So: interesting experiment, but you’re overseeing this big change that twitter made lately.
I completely disagree. If two of my friends are having a conversation, those tweets are both relevant and interesting to me.
Very easy: I use Tweetie, click the Reply link in my @Boris view, select @BorisReplies from the Account view and publish.
I’m already used to handling more accounts as I also check @TheNextWeb and @TheCounter. Not a big problem to also check @BorisReplies…
+1 on “Unknown”, and let me add that that “change” wasn’t actually a big change but removing an option that only a small minority used.
The default setting has always been that @replies to people you do not follow do not show up in your Twitter stream.
If you reply to people that I follow as well, that is _not_ noise to me. If those people hadn’t been interesting, I would not have followed them in the first place. So I can only advise your followers to follow the @BorisReplies account as well, so they can pick up your conversations with the people they care about….
It’s all about options. If you want to see my tweets AND replies you follow both. Giving people that choice can’t be bad.
This is actyally my idea!, are you telepathic or what?
Serious, I have been thinking to do exactly the same thing, just haven’t done it yet, but you might see my replies account coming now
nice Boris
It would be interesting to hear how you manage this technically. If you want to reply to a twit you received in @boris, do you switch to @borisreplies, search for @boris, scan the results to find the twit you want to reply to, and only then reply? Seems a bit tedious even if you use a client that lets you manage multiple accounts.
Or did you come up with a better technique?
As you said, nobody knows what is right for Twitter. My first months of use I realized there were lots of Technology “enlightened despots” in Spain trying to tell you how to use it. Luckily after some months of use, once I started following people related to all kinds of businesses and interests, I realized how wrong was to think what is right and what is not with such a new way of communication as Twitter is.
Interesting use. Looking forward to see what your experiment comes up with.
Thanks for your great site!!!
Cheers!!!
Although I’m not (yet) in a position to worry about that kind of thing, I think it’s a smart solution to your problem.
and that way, you are back at where you were with just one account, which represents you on twitter.
The more I think about it, the more stupid the idea of a separate replies-account is. Sorry Boris. Better luck next time :)
Nice idea Boris!
Sounds like an interesting idea and could be a start of a new trend.
do us a favour and write a follow up in a couple weeks to let us know how its going. If you have success I might just do it myself.
Interesting idea. My own take – which I’m sure many people do – is to have two accounts, but not for replies. One is the “real me” which my employer can find and monitor and which is only a reflection of my genuine work interests, and never contains anything contentious; the other is completely made up and allows me to make political comments, moan about things my employer does (a local Council) plus all those stupid remarks or other things that I might not want people to link to me.
I’m interested to hear how this works out. The fact that you use tweetie to make it possible (without long searching and comparison time) is genius! I had considered another account for this very reason. My motivation, however, is a bit different: I have my facebook status messages connected with Twitter, and I find it tacky to have @reply messages as my Facebook status. Having a separate Twitter account would indeed solve my problem. I’ll have to ponder this!
Alright, well, I actually bought Tweetie, and I can attest that it is VERY easy to reply to folks’ tweets using your alternate account. Very nice, thank you for the idea and the info!
Hmm, shame for triple-posting, but I had some misinformation up there, thought I should correct it. Tweets that begin with @username etc. Do not show up as Facebook status messages, even if the accounts are connected.
But I’m still very pleased with my second account and my new Tweetie iPhone app!