I just read Social Media Todays article and the developer group’s announcement of Twitter’s intention to immediately ban any form of recurring tweets. I’m alarmed and concerned because I love Twitter. And with this move, they are taking a giant step toward killing their market and ceding it to Facebook.
Let’s look at the facts:
- Twitter is going for the business market. They’ve already announced a plan for premium accounts and courted business through FAQs tailored to them.
- Twitter’s whole technology is built around the idea of a continuous, real-time stream of information, from which TWEETS FALL OFF.
- Bloggers, businesses, and anyone who actually wants to have a chance of being heard has to tweet the same message more than once. (Especially those who don’t have many thousands of followers.) If they don’t, the chances are miniscule of their tweet being seen by anyone, let alone large numbers of people. (See my last blog post, When is it spam?)
- Although repeats are annoying for client users, the latest stats suggest that a majority of users access through the Web site, where tweets will not be seen unless recurring tweets are allowed.
- Retweets aren’t enough, and recurring tweets help level the playing field. The larger your following, the better your chance of being retweeted. The combination of recurring tweets and hashtags gives tweeps with smaller followings a better chance of getting their message out, and building bigger followings.
It’s clear that many people use Twitter for social reasons. But a big part of the value on Twitter is its ability to surface new information. Twitter users are information junkies. Recurring tweets have a role to play in fulfilling that user goal.
I’ve blogged before about the fact that I think businesses bring real value to Twitter. Without businesses, Twitter becomes purely a social network, with a lot of competition. I’m not sure it’s 140ct and real-time nature will be enough to allow it to survive or thrive as just a social network. Not with all the competition in that arena. It’s grown in large part because of its ability to serve up information snippets and link to more information via a headline mechanism.
Bloggers (yes, they are businesses) and companies have a much greater reason to provide new and valuable information than individuals do. They have a strong reason to invest time and energy into making Twitter more vibrant, encouraging more conversations, providing more value through the Twitter feeds.
As far as I can tell, Twitter hasn’t looked at the facts about their market, their users, and their competition. Nor have they considered that there are technical solutions to the problem of users seeing duplicate tweets. They are a technology company, aren’t they?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If Twitter is serious about keeping businesses on Twitter, then they have to continue to create a place that provides value to businesses. Removing recurring tweets from the picture SERIOUSLY undermines the value of Twitter for busineses.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
I couldn’t say it better myself.
But Twitter goes one step further to antagonize small business users of their service. By shutting down the accounts of those who try to build a large following by enthusiastically following others (Twitter calls it “aggressively following”), while at the same time actively promoting large followings by the likes of @aplusk, @downing, etc. through their sign up process, they are creating 2 classes of twitter users — those who got in before the rules were changed, and those signing up now.
The basic unfairness of their actions leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I think you’re right about the two classes. Several of Twitter’s moves either purposely or inadvertently are favoring large businesses, big personalities, or those that already have a large following. It’s a shame, too, because Twitter has offered a great opportunity to smaller players.
I agree with your assessment about recurring tweets. If Twitter wants to be a business tool, then they can’t ban people for using it in whatever business way they deem fit — as long as it doesn’t violate any laws (such as libel or slander).
Would a newspaper tell you that you can’t run the same ad every day? Even if it was a big, obnoxious ad that says “BUY! BUY! BUY!!!!! NOW! NOW! NOW!!!”? No, of course not. It’s up to the reader to pay attention or ignore it.
Frankly, I don’t even care that much about spammers and multi-level marketers on Twitter. If they want to follow me, let ‘em. Can’t hurt. Might help. If they look at my tweetstream (doubtful), maybe they’ll learn something.
I say let users decide who they want to follow – or not. If you tweet too much. Or repeat yourself, users will unfollow. I’ve heard newbies complain about verbose tweeters before (including me), but they don’t bother me because I’m following so many people, that being verbose is the only way I’ll likely notice them.
As Twitter matures, there will be a lot more experienced users out there, and fewer newbies. After all, TechCrunch just reported yesterday that Twitter’s growth was flat in September.
@CarriBugbee
Social Profiles: http://bit.ly/CarriB
Thanks, Carri! I generally agree. I do understand that they need to protect against Twitter becoming a spam heaven, because that can kill their market, too. But this is too restrictive. Plus they haven’t spelled out what actually constitutes a “recurring” tweet. Really, they could implement some technical solutions to this. Like monitoring hash tags and the tweets and limiting how many times in a given time period a tweet can appear. Handling things in their lists properly so that people don’t see the same tweets repeatedly. They need to be smarter about this.
On the one hand, I can really appreciate their desire to eliminate spam by eliminating recurring tweets. On the other hand, I can also appreciate your perspective on it. In the end however, I think of recurring tweets as the lazy person’s way of “participating” in social media. I don’t see it as a genuine case of actually interacting with other people. In fact, in many cases, it’s a way of automating twitter so that the person doesn’t have to be on twitter. That seems to be spam to me.
What businesses and people need to learn about social networking sites such as twitter is that it’s actually important to network and build relationships…not spam people with recurring tweets with links that go back to their website or serve as a method of affiliate linking that pays them for putting the links up.
I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t really matter what Twitter does. If the “decision” were to be made tomorrow, I’m guessing that Ev and Biz would be Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year”. But there’s an awful lot that can happen before we wrap up this year, both in the Twitterverse and the “real world”. Twitter could die of dozens of other things besides banning repetitive tweets from businesses.
As far as I can tell, there hasn’t really been a new “defining moment” for Twitter since, say, the death of Michael Jackson. What we’ve had since then is more of the same. We’ve had breaking news, but other news sources are fighting back. I’ve seen plenty of *speculation* – like the rumor that Twitter is trying to sell / license “firehose” access to Google, Microsoft or both. But there hasn’t been any indication that Twitter has a dependable revenue stream.
I personally think it would be a mistake for either Google or Microsoft to buy / lease the “firehose”, because they can most likely gain just as much business intelligence from the free publicly available “spritzer”, “track” and “follow” streams and the existing Twitter search feed. And I think Twitter needs a *big* win to stave off what I think is the eventual triumph of the Facebook as a personal social network and LinkedIn as a professional one.
Sure, Twitter could “hit a grand slam home run”, but a I think a steady “singles and doubles and world-class pitching” strategy from LinkedIn and Facebook would most likely triumph. So, while you are correct in saying that businesses need to repeat their messages to be heard, I’m not sure it matters to Twitter.
This is exactly my reaction when I read about the banning of repeat tweets. Even @guykawasaki says he uses repeat tweets. It may clutter twitter’s past stream — unless you mention someone’s name — only those watching twitter at that time will catch it. Sometimes we need to announce things that are beneficial for others a few times — just not one after another.
Does a rewritten topic count as a recurring tweet? Or is it identical?
Will it affect Tweets that have the same link, and the same message but written slightly differently?
I completely agree with you. I can see that they would want to restrict “spammers” who constantly tweet the same thing time and time again very frequently, but the average repeat tweet that goes out maybe 3 or 4 times a day to ensure you capture different timezones etc, should not fall into this category. I think Twitter should be setting some limits to stop spamming and be vigilant about those types of people – or even all the people I get who follow me and then turn out to be what looks like Russian Porn Stars who have no followers and never made a tweet. Those are more annoying!
I wonder what the people in Iran would have thought about using Twitter if they couldn’t have recurring tweets.
I completely agree with the suggestion that Twitter instead limit the number of times something can be tweeted. I guess they are either wedded exclusively to their original idea that it be about friends connecting to the minutiae of each other’s lives, or are doing as you suggest in a follow-up post: setting the stage for charging anyone to do recurring tweets. Or both.
It just seems so pointless to purposely limit growth, which is what they are doing. Not everyone who has recurring tweets is selling something. Like you say, different time zones etc. and the increased size of Twitter mean that there’s little chance of getting information out to people who want it, with only one tweet. So are they trying to shrink the audience enough that one tweet is sufficient?
Wrote about this same topic yesterday and completely agree. My persoanl belief is that the ultimate effect on small business will simply push them to another medium.
Pooooooor business! You whine when you’re prevented from ruining yet another online tool with mindless and annoying ads. Just go away!
Your post has me rethinking repeating or recurring tweets. Tweets do fall off the feed, either the web or a desktop client; not everyone is online all the time; and of course people view thousands of tweets a day. (So I’m given myself permission to repeat myself!)
I have followed, then unfollowed, a few who retweet the exact same 5 tweets all day, everyday with no other conversations. That should be blocked, but that’s an extreme case which I solved with an unfollow.
Carri is right about letting users decide, part of Twitter’s inherent opt-in strategy. There are tools out there to block spam, unfollow, etc.
“Without businesses, Twitter becomes purely a social network, with a lot of competition.” I can see why you made that bold. Wow. I like many out there use Twitter for business…for business socializing.
I draw a line between professional and personal, and Twitter is one of my professional networks. LinkedIn doesn’t lend itself to the kind of relationship-building conversations Twitter does; FriendFeed is fine, but tends to duplicate most people’s Twitter feeds (so it’s used when Twitter is down).
Twitter’s growing market is business, and they need to take a closer look at how businesses use it.
I disagree that this gives any added advantage to the larger “brands” on Twitter. If you want to build a large following then engage your followers with custom content. Recurring auto-tweets that use the same tweet to link to the same content shows sheer laziness on the part of the marketer. Is it that tough to come up with different headlines that link back to your blog post or product launch page? If you really have something of value to offer then original material shouldn’t be that tough to come by.
It boils down to relevant content, not numbers. If 10,000 people are following you, what good does it do if only 53 actually read what you have to say because all you do is repeat a lame message? On the other hand, if your number slowly grows because people are interested in what you have to say and will pay attention, i.e. keep following, you’ve got gold. I don’t like the numbers business, it’s like collecting pennies. Nice to look at but they won’t buy your new car.
I totally agree with you as far as the numbers game. I want good quality followers that are following because they like what I have to offer. That’s what matters to me.
I think we actually might be in agreement. I’m with you on tweeting the same text over and over again. But that’s not what socialoomph’s recurring tweets does. The question is how Twitter defines “recurring tweets.” See my latest blog post (http://bit.ly/2jeAJJ) for four scenarios in which I use recurring tweets. I find it hard to believe Twitter intended to ban all of these. I’m totally with you on the ones that are just blasting the same message over and over again, though.
If I don’t want the repeating tweets in my stream, I don’t follow the tweeter. It doesn’t bother me if the robotweeters follow me, doubt they pay attention to anything I say. Most of these types of tweeters follow thousands of accounts, so far not a single one of them has noticed I unfollowed them.
I agree with you regarding custom and relevant content. But take a look at the scenarios I describe in my latest blog post, http://bit.ly/2jeAJJ. I use recurring tweets for all of those purposes, and they are fresh and relevant. Recurring tweets in socialoomph let you change the title to avoid that laziness thing. Do you think those uses of recurring tweets are bad ones?
I agree with you that this is a circumstance where, to a large degree, the market will take care of itself. People who retweet the exact same thing over and over again will get unfollowed. And I also use Twitter for business socializing, mainly. For those people that use it purely for personal socializing, this probably is a non-issue.
I really suggest you take a look at my latest post and see what I use recurring tweets for. http://bit.ly/2jeAJJ I rescheduled eight of them last night. Two of them were requests for people to take my survey. The others were tweeting other people’s content or research data I thought would be of interest. None were ads. I think you’re making the same mistake Twitter has, and not considering all the ways people are using recurring tweets for purposes other than spamming people.
I hope you’re wrong about pushing small biz to other platforms. On the other hand, if Twitter really has made a business decision to go for the larger business market and ignore the rest, they are, of course, entitled to.
This is such a good point!! I didn’t even think about the time-difference issue. Or Iran! Thank you!
I agree re: spamming and blasting.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a new type of spamming. People who @ tweet me out of the blue trying to “converse” with me. But they have nothing to say and aren’t asking anything relevant. I think they are just trying to use the “conversation” or “relationship” method to gain followers, by trying to strike up conversations out-of-the-blue with random people. I think that’s just as spammy and sleazy as mass following, personally.
I have no idea. See my latest blog post http://bit.ly/2jeAJJ. It all depends upon how they are defining recurring tweets. And I think that’s very unclear.
I agree. They need to define this more clearly. See my latest blog post for four scenarios. http://bit.ly/2jeAJJ Hard for me to believe they meant to ban all of them.
I am a big fan of twitter and have been using it a very long time, but I am also excited to see an open source competitor growing up, and many other alternatives also coming along.
I think twitter’s elimination of repeats is the wrong move for twitter. The spammers already have very effective tools to get around this. For example, using multiple link shorteners and multiple landing pages combined with a little random text. The users they will lose are the ones they want the most.
That said, this is probably good for the users in the long run because it opens the door wider for competition. Competition, if nothing else, spurs on creativity. It is even good for Twitter because they are less likely to be treated as a monopoly by the government.
So what do I think happens next? Twitter will have less Spam (Yeah!) and the amount of people on twitter may drop. Most of those lost will be spammers but unfortunately many of them could be content creators who do not believe they have the resources (time or money) to get their message out effectively with Twitter without the help of automated recurring tweets.
Now let’s take yet another step back and not forget the world was still spinning before Twitter cut out recurring tweets. As business owners we need to adapt with technology. Twitter is just one of many tools at our disposal. The greatest tool we have is our minds, continue to use that to think of new and creative ways to grow your business. My message to twitter: You broke my heart a little but I still love you!
Oh, I still love Twitter, too. I think what they actually meant to do was elminate REPEAT tweets, where you’re tweeting the exact same message over and over again. I believe they just didn’t think about all the ways that recurring tweets are used (as per my latest blog post). Right now, I can still manually do recurring tweets. It’s just more of a pain in the tush.
In fact, it’s because I love Twitter that I’m concerned. As I said, I don’t think it’ll make it as just a social network. And I want Twitter to make it!