Jun 10
2
A while back I hooked up with a twitter service that would find and befriend people with common interests with me. It ramped up quite quickly and before long I was following over 3000 people and then were following me too. The numbers were great, but something didn’t feel right.
My conscience for one. Twitter is social media. The key word being social and here I was just automatically following thousands of people without getting to know if I wanted to actually follow them. Did I even want to hear from them?
I decided to check out all the people I was following. I was SHOCKED!
I simply wanted to connect with people who were into outdoor activities, online marketing and network marketing. I had also put in a specific filter of words to keep from pornography, drugs, bad language and the like.
What I found was unbelievable, but is typical of what happens when you let a computer build your social connections. A computer which doesn’t understand all the nuances of natural language.
I was ‘following’ erotica, ‘bestporn’ (and I had porn as a filter so it maybe a bug), people with some real nasty language, and people who had absolutely nothing in their profile. I found this part quite disturbing since I specifically wanted to connect with people with outdoor activities, online marketing and network marketing. How can software match me up with profiles that do not match what I’m looking for?
Then there is the thought of what those I was following says about me? When someone searches for me to find out what kind of person I am, they are going to wonder about the apparent disconnect between the way I present myself and what my online profiles imply about me. I don’t want to have to laugh off the results of automation… I want my online presence to represent me.
I write this as a warning to those making use of automated social media software. You need to stay on top of it… daily! I’ve spent over 3 hours so far, ‘unfollowing’ over 1600 and growing people because they’ve got nothing in common with me and I’m simply not interested.
I’m of the firm belief that if you want to be true to the system, you’ve got to personally get in there and do it yourself. Build real connections and keep the spammy software out of it. Some things should never be automated, and I think anyone can agree that social connections is definitely one of those things.
Personally, I want people to find me and think that I’ve got integrity and that I’m not some guy carelessly abusing a system with a numbers game. When my numbers drop, and I’m sure all the auto-unfollows will kick in and drop them, I’ll be able to look at those small numbers and know who I’m providing value to and who I’m getting value from.
