DISQUS

holdenpage · 2 months ago

Man. Sounds confusing. What Twitter client will you be using to manage?

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Holden, I'm going to try Tweetdeck for posting. I can already do most of it
with the existing tools I have though. I plan to automate as much as
possible to the extent I can still keep the conversation real and personal.
It will be an interesting experiment - I'm still not sure how it will all
work.

Steffan Antonas · 2 months ago

Jesse - I think it's great that you've made the jump. I'm considering it as well. Following more than a few hundred people isn't sustainable anyway - it's exhausting jumping through hurdles to just to keep up with the people you care about. Eventually (and this is just my experience) you start losing your existing relationships by spreading yourself too thin. I think that going back to engaging people individually (treating them as goldfish, rather than schools of fish) makes the entire experience more meaningful and powerful - it's better to know 100 people well and engage them often than to broadcast to 10K and "catch up" with your true friends every few weeks. Thoughts?

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Steffan, there is still power in following everyone who follows you. I'm
just trying to make it more personal where it counts. I'll be doing
auto-follow on the @jesseslinks account, for instance. I'll be manually
following everyone on the @JesseStay account. Each user has their own
purposes and uses, which is why auto-follow's only one feature we provide on
SocialToo. The whole idea of social media is there is always more than one
way to do it. I'm hoping I can build a nice community using these
techniques, but even I am not sure what will happen.

Steffan Antonas · 2 months ago

Great. Let us know how it goes. I'm curious to see if you find that having multiple accounts for different uses works out for you. Thank god for Tweetdeck, right? ;-)

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Yeah, the multiple account thing is certainly going to be interesting to
manage. But if I get real relationships out of it, I think it may be worth
it.

Tibor Holoda · 2 months ago

Have a look at CoTweet, Jesse. It's pretty good in handling responses on multiple accounts.

Josh Fraser · 2 months ago

I agree. It sounds confusing. I'll be curious to hear how this works out for you.

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Josh, @JesseStay will be the firehose, but I'll expect you to participate.
:-)

Tibor Holoda · 2 months ago

Only couple of days ago i thought about doing something similar like you did with the JessesLinks account. Interesting approach. Good luck with that!

DragonI · 2 months ago

Interesting experiment. What about a 4th acct for the last side of your personality ;) Just joking!

leonardspeiser · 2 months ago

Cool. Can't wait to see what happens. Thanks for the post.

igobydoc · 2 months ago

Interesting way of doing things Jesse, please share how the experiment works out for you as the weeks / months go on.

By the way, love the photo of the Boston pup! Dang cute dogs!

Doc

WendyPeters · 2 months ago

I like the basis of your experiment Jesse. All of 'this' (this being the web and social media and connecting and all the rest of it) is supposed to be about connecting with other human beings in the first place. But I often feel like the initial intent is getting lost as each grows. Count me in!

JNFerree · 2 months ago

ya know jesse, in a few weeks, it might not even matter that you put the kibosh on your twitter peeps. rumor has it that google wave is going to be a game changer. knowing that the same bros. who brought us google maps are the genius behind google Wave, I think we're all in for a nice ride when it comes to real-time collaboration, sharing time phased events et al. the demo i watched a few weeks ago looked VERY appealing!

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Just to be clear, I'm not putting the kibosh on my Twitter peeps. I'm
actually making it easier for them to communicate with me now.
Regarding Wave, we'll see - I'm in the developer sandbox, and it seems to me
like more of a private means of communication. We'll see if it ends up
being a competitor with Twitter or not - I don't see it as such.

Adelaide DJ · 2 months ago

it's hard to change the way people behave ime, twitter is kind of like a billboard you have to up your game in order to gain people's attention so you can cut through all of the noise but once people show interest you should move them to your facebook fan page or email list as quickly as possible, facebook has more tools for relationship building me thinks :-) twitter(at)locspoc

Randall Klopping · 2 months ago

Yeah I've noticed a lot of people follow to get followers. I must be old fashioned. I follow those who interest me or is something I feel a worthy cause and figure the ones who keep following me do it for much the same. I want quality more than quantity.

Lucretia · 2 months ago

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do here.
Will be talking to you about this in Vegas - but this post shines a light on some stuff I think is highly important.
Now if only I could figure out how to manage it myself...

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Lucretia, agreed - these actions are only the beginning. I'm still trying
to figure out the best option as well. Our panel at BlogWorld has also
inspired some of my thinking on all this. Looking forward to talking to you
there - we're going up against Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo, and Louis Gray,
so we need to do what we can to fill up our room! :-)

Gail Helmer · 2 months ago

Hmmmm...well I agree with the problem Jesse, but confused by your solution. But, I always love to see a new idea explored, good luck :-)

Michael Fidler · 2 months ago

It's an unfortunate mistake which looks like it's going to yield some interesting results. However, it's only because of your attitude about it, which is positive!

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Thanks Michael. I could have re-enabled auto-follow which would have fixed
it eventually (1,000 people a day), but rather than do that I thought it
made sense re-evaluating my strategy on Twitter.

Michael Fidler · 2 months ago

I just love your attitude, and your approach to solving problems. It's nice that one account is meant only for helping others as well. Did you really get followed by twenty girls at once? Maybe they're not spammers,even though common sense suggests they are!

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

They all had similar photos, no updates, and things like "I'm a 21 year old
lonely single girl looking for guys". Totally serious. This after only
starting a private account.

Ian Hendry · 2 months ago

This is a really interesting post in that you're amongst the first who has really questioned what their followers number means. I always say that networking -- any type, including using Twitter -- is a means to an end, not an aim in itself. You can't bank Twitter followers and it means nothing if you have 20,000 who don't interact with you. Really, I'd rather have 100 in total and have every one of them click every link I post.

We're adding Twitter followers import to our Social CRM system soon to make it easy for you to compare your Twitter contacts with contacts you have on other sites or know through email, so you can consolidate all information about a specific contact within just one customer record. We're hoping this helps people to see the value of their followers lists and get real detail behind the people who you interact with on more than one platform. It will also give alternateive ways of contacting them using the additional profile information we grab.

We're developing this because I need it, but I hope it's of use to others.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Thanks Ian. Social Graph import/consolidation is needed - Facebook is trying
to enable that via Facebook Connect and Google is trying to do that with
their Friend Connect, but until they both agree it will be tough to do with
just one or the other. If you like this topic you should come to my panel at
BlogWorld Expo this year - we're talking about this very thing - I call it
the "Twitter Game", and we'll be talking about why numbers don't mean much.

ZuDfunck · 2 months ago

Wouldn't the recently announced "Twitter List function" accomplish what you are doing with 3 separate accounts? I am thinking it is pretty close?

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Possibly - I want to wait and see what it is and how it works, but it's
definitely a step in the right direction.

Karmen Reed · 2 months ago

Brave, no questions about it Jesse! Let us know how you are managing these three accounts, whether your communities cross, and where you get most engagements.

mfruchter · 2 months ago

Jesse I like your epiphany of sorts, but it's going to be hell managing three Twitter accounts. I tried something like this before and it did not last long. It's simply to much work. I'm curious to see how this works out for you. Keep us posted.

Mike

Jesse Stay · 2 months ago

Thanks Mike - it's a fun experiment.

KarenSwim · 2 months ago

Hi Jesse, I'm really interested in your experiment. My goal with social media has always been to build relationships, have conversations and be of service to others. I was an early adopter of Twitter and as the platform has evolved it is harder to truly connect. I have had to add filters and automation to some of the tasks and weed out the bots and spammers. I just followed you on all of your accounts and look forward to connecting and conversing.