Paper.li adapts its auto-tweet

My post yesterday about Paper.li generated a fair bit of reaction and so it’s interesting to learn today that the service has decided to withdraw its auto-tweet feature:

“We hear the complaints, and are looking into ways to satisfy paper.li users while reducing the spammy feeling for others. We are thus testing a new type of tweet. It doesn’t just say a daily is out – it shares the top story of the day. We believe such a tweet clearly conveys more interesting info for followers. It is quite close to a retweet really – so something that basically says: “this is relevant for me and the group of people I follow – you should probably read it too”.

Does this solution make it any better? A little, I guess, but I’m still not convinced that auto-tweets are the way forward. Whatever the effect will be, the information overload debate is certainly not over…

Is the retweet dead? Using the ‘favourite tag’

Last week I wrote about Twitter’s controversial changes to native retweet functionality. And, today, I’m wondering if there is a better way…

In my blog post on retweets, I suggested that the RT can be used to flag up interesting comments, posts or links. It does this in a very simple way: by putting the tweet in question into the stream of your followers (this happens in both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of the RT).

I think this might be a broken feature however. There are problems with the old RT function – for example, a popular link can crop up time and time again in your feed and some tweeters who RT too often can become irksome.

The new method has its flaws too, with random tweets assigned to people you don’t follow cropping up out of the blue.

What about the favourite feature?

With these questions in mind, I was interested to read a post by Keith from Knowthenetwork.com, flagged to me by Courtney Engle examining the ‘favourite’ feature in Twitter.

I hardly ever favourite tweets. That’s not to say that I don’t have favouite tweets, I just don’t really see the need to ‘favourite’ them – where’s the gain or the value?

If I want to share a tweet, I’ll RT it. If I want to praise a fellow tweeter, rather than favouriting their tweet, I’ll probably just send them a reply or a DM. The only time I really use this feature is to flag something that I want to remember or possibly explore or catch up on at a later date – not how it was intended to be used.

Tagging tweets

Keith’s post looks at the inability to ‘tag’ content in Twitter. He points out that the ‘favourite’ feature is really the only way to do this and mentions how Robert Scoble is now using this feature, which is giving it more prominence.

But for me, the problem with the favourite feature is that it doesn’t allow me to see the favourites from those I follow very easily. If I want to check out Robert’s favourite tweets, I need to visit his page on a regular basis, or subscribe to an RSS feed – but with so many tweets being flagged, this could quickly become overwhelming.

Is following favourites the answer?

Wouldn’t it be useful to have the ability to subscribe or ‘follow’ favourites? Then, when Robert or anyone else you respected favourited a tweet, it would then show up in your feed.

With so much content out there, the problem we all face is keeping on top of it all in a manageable way. Tagging is certainly one way to do this, but the tags themselves have to be accessible in order to be useful.

So what about it Twitter…?

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Is Twitter opening a can of worms with the RT change?

Phil Sheard has written a post examining the impact to brands of the changes to retweets that Twitter is gradually introducing (there is no need for me to repeat what he says here as he puts it very eloquently).

I’m a big retweeter. And I use the ‘traditional’ RT for a variety of different reasons:

  • To show my ‘support’ or agreement with a tweet/idea/post or cause
  • To flag up interesting ideas/links to my followers
  • To credit the original author (or RTer) of the tweet

As I’ve suggested in the comments on Phil’s post, I think Twitter may be about to experience some backlash with this change. And to my mind, much of this comes down to the ‘if it’s not broken…’ argument. Personally, I don’t see a problem with the system as it exists at the moment.

Perhaps I am just afflicted by that very human condition, whereby we automatically shy away from ‘change’ – the ‘Facebook effect’. When something (like a social network) that we have a close attachment to undergoes a change, our automatic inclination is to resist it.

There is precedent here. In May 2009, Twitter made a subtle change to the way replies show up in your Twitter stream. There was a huge backlash initially to the move, but this soon abated and today, we still quite happily use Twitter.

It remains to be seen whether Twitter will experience the same backlash with the RT change, as it will fly under the radar for many users.

But, I do think Twitter has to be careful.

I love the fact that Twitter is a very simple, open platform that allows users to communicate and interact in whatever way they please. Yes, there are certain ‘conventions’ that crop up, but these aren’t really imposed from on high, rather, they are moderated by the community as a whole.

This is in stark contrast to other networks like Facebook, where the way you use the service is dictated by the network itself.

Is Twitter potentially in danger of pushing its agenda too much on its users? Or is a bit of organisation and order important and useful as popularity in the network continues to grow and user numbers increase?

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About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

© 2012 Danny Whatmough - Made by me