Twitter fades into irrelevance as bots eat its own users
A bot has suspended my Twitter account without citing a specific reason. The account does not appear to have been compromised. Unable to access the original statistics, I cannot determine if there was some issue related to the ratio of followers to following. I received a automated email, two actually, that provided no further information. I thought about it a while and realized that I really do not use Twitter. My primary social media vehicle remains FaceBook, with Google+ a distant second in terms of social media connectivity. I happen to tweet only because my blogs tweet, which may be the heart of the issue: I tweet without logging in. Which means Twitter cannot advertise to me. I suspect that is at the core of why I was suspended, a tweets to log in ratio that was too high. Either way, Twitter has remained irrelevant to my connectivity and continues to be irrelevant, so no big loss.
While I know Twitter is cited as being important in the Arab spring, I still have trouble understanding what the core usefulness of Twitter is from a business model perspective. There is no compelling reason for me log in, as there is for my email and FaceBook. I log into email and FaceBook essentially daily, I log into Twitter once a month at best. If my experience is not atypical, then Twitter certainly has a limited future ahead of it. Another Hi5, Bebo, Mebo, site that will fade into obscurity even while it continues to exist in the dark and dusty corners of cyberspace. Skip tweeting me, drop me a note via email or post to my wall in FaceBook, my tweeting days are done.
Post-script: Twitter autobotics would send two separate emails noting the matter was closed unless I responded to the emails to re-open the issue. I responded to both noting my ambivalence toward Twitter as a media for moving the information I care about. Without any further useful explanation I found that my account had been un-suspended. My ratio of followers to following was about two-to-one, while not the "1:1" ideal of a "balanced" network, my position as a faculty member means students may choose to follow me even when I opt not to follow them back. Their reasons for following me may relate to my courses, my reasons for following them would be less clear and possible misconstrued.
I did some judicious following and now at 95:51 my ratio is a slightly slimmer 1.86. I still wish I knew what botamatic rule I tripped over. Maybe they were just checking to see if I still had a digital pulse.
While I know Twitter is cited as being important in the Arab spring, I still have trouble understanding what the core usefulness of Twitter is from a business model perspective. There is no compelling reason for me log in, as there is for my email and FaceBook. I log into email and FaceBook essentially daily, I log into Twitter once a month at best. If my experience is not atypical, then Twitter certainly has a limited future ahead of it. Another Hi5, Bebo, Mebo, site that will fade into obscurity even while it continues to exist in the dark and dusty corners of cyberspace. Skip tweeting me, drop me a note via email or post to my wall in FaceBook, my tweeting days are done.
Post-script: Twitter autobotics would send two separate emails noting the matter was closed unless I responded to the emails to re-open the issue. I responded to both noting my ambivalence toward Twitter as a media for moving the information I care about. Without any further useful explanation I found that my account had been un-suspended. My ratio of followers to following was about two-to-one, while not the "1:1" ideal of a "balanced" network, my position as a faculty member means students may choose to follow me even when I opt not to follow them back. Their reasons for following me may relate to my courses, my reasons for following them would be less clear and possible misconstrued.
I did some judicious following and now at 95:51 my ratio is a slightly slimmer 1.86. I still wish I knew what botamatic rule I tripped over. Maybe they were just checking to see if I still had a digital pulse.
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