Comments on: Invasion of the Opportunists

By: ReinventingErica.com – Day 1 of 90 | ReinventingErica.com

ReinventingErica.com – Day 1 of 90 | ReinventingErica.com — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:00:40 +0000

[...] see, I talk about my life online. The good. The bad. The Awesome. The “Why Did This Happen To Me?”. I share a lot. Sometimes maybe [...]

By: J.D. Falk

J.D. Falk — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:21:18 +0000

Exactly what happened to usenet, and email, and search engines, and many other things we all love and rely upon.

By: Nathan Grisham

Nathan Grisham — Sun, 03 May 2009 07:15:16 +0000

Agree with Jim Hughes and Greeblemonkey. I want to autofollow because I want to assume that I would be interested in everyone that’s interested in me, but it just isn’t so. It might take me a few minutes a day, but I feel better vetting each person before I followback.

By: Julie @ The Mom Slant

Julie @ The Mom Slant — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:06:07 +0000

Here via @greeblemonkey – great post. We do talk internally, and we do call bullshitake. I just have a hard time with calling it out in public; I do enough policing here at home.

By: Aimee Greeblemonkey

Aimee Greeblemonkey — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:53:51 +0000

Yes yes YES. As you know, I call these people the Twitter Pyramid Scheme. It’s obnoxious.

By: Erica

Erica — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:19:33 +0000

I wanted to clarify a few points. First – this isn’t an issue about Twitter specifically (Twitter is simply a good example in this case). We’ve all seen people like this in our communities. And this problem IS NOT going away.

But I know that I’ve contributed to this growing epidemic by staying silent – not for months – but for years. Maybe it’s because I’m not in my 20’s anymore, or maybe it’s because my Bullshitake tolerance has gone down – but I’m just tired of seeing the work of my friends devalued and diluted.

I’m writing a followup post to this about Community. And I’m going to highlight all the incredible things our Houston Community has done and is currently doing. Let’s take the focus off of the problem, and put it onto the solution.

By: MaryBeth Smith

MaryBeth Smith — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:16:53 +0000

Erica, thanks for a thoughtful post and great writing as always.
One of the best things about the Twitter community is the way that people look out for each other. I continue to be grateful to you and @gdruckman for ethically and cleanly giving me a heads up about The Person In Question.
Saw something this morning on Twitter: JeanineDealRT @lovepeaceunity Tweet everybody the way you wish to be tweeted.. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Gandhi
What goes around, comes around. Thanks for all the good you do for ALL of us!

By: Jillian

Jillian — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:09:56 +0000

AWESOME! If there were a Twitter Bible, I’d expect this to be found in the Twitter Book of Exodus, in the Twitter Ten Commandments…

But seriously though, very well written. I’ve been having disconcerting thoughts regarding the influx in popularity Twitter has received over the last couple of weeks. I actually DM’ed the Twitter Traffic Machine guy after he started following me, asking him why (and you were on point when you said this, which is why I’m going to use it) he thought “influence has something to do with numbers.” No response… meaning no desire to indulge me and even more so, create a “relationship” with me… interesting, no? *swiftly Qwitted

By: Sal B

Sal B — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:48:51 +0000

And the people of twitter said..Amen.

Great post Erica!

By: Justin Boland

Justin Boland — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:41:10 +0000

99% of the spam profiles are automated and run, en masse, from a central software deck. It’s bad form for a human being to get angry at a code robot — just block them. That’s the most we can do for the hygiene of Twitter and it’s expensive servers. Once all Twitter users make it a point of fact to just block spam followers, rather than keep them to inflate their egos, this sort of advertisement will become more difficult.

Sadly, it will never go away, though. Simply because it works — that’s why I still get emails from Nigerians (and now, brave US troops who want me to help them smuggle out $23 million of Saddam’s money.)

Not to jump onto a soapbox first thing in the AM, but: this is because America’s education system failed decades ago and we’ve got a sizeable chunk of our population operating at roughly a third grade level. They drive vehicles, they vote, they spend lots of money on movies and they even reproduce. They also happen to be online and have access to a credit card.

As long as those people exist to be taken advantage of, other will be taking advantage of them.