First item cross-posted at LiveJournal.
Forget Ashton Kutcher and Oprah, forget #unfollowfriday, forget 25 Random Evil Things about Twitter — the key problems with the social media / microblogging / broadcast IM / whatever you want to call it service boil down to two problems:
Twitter’s prompt is not something general like “What’s on your mind?” It’s “What are you doing?” That encourages people to post things like “I’m eating lunch” or “Just got into work,” or “Posting on Twitter.” Presumably what they mean is “What are you doing that you think people would find interesting?” but of course that’s too long a prompt from a usability standpoint.
The thing is, there’s no reason to broadcast the mundane to the world. Don’t tell me “I’m eating soup.” Tell me, “Just learned that gazpacho soup is best served cold. I wonder if they eat it in space?”
Unfortunately, that means the signal-to-noise ratio can get pretty bad at times.
Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters of plain text so that the your name and comments can fit in a standard SMS message. Now, this is great if you use Twitter via text messages on your mobile phone. It’s not so great if you use Twitter on the web, or through a smartphone app like Twitterific on iPhone or Twidroid on Android, or through any of the zillions of desktop apps.
I don’t have a problem with the 140-character limit itself (it can actually be liberating in a way), though it would be nice to have some formatting options beyond all-caps and *asterisk bolding*.
The real problem is that links have to share that limit. URL-shortening services have exploded lately as people try to squeeze links into the tiniest space possible to save room for their precious text. Even if you use something as short as is.gd, just including one link means you’re down to 122 characters.
Plus URL shorteners come with a host of problems, in particular the fact that they hide the destination. That’s no big deal if the target matches the description, or if it’s a harmless prank like a Rick Roll, but it’s all too easy to disguise something malicious.
Seriously, if you got an email that said something like this:
Look at this! http://example.com/asdjh
Would you click on that link? Even if it appeared to be from someone you know? That’s just asking to get your computer infected by a virus, trojan horse or other piece of malware. Or to see something you wish you could unsee.
I hesitate to bring up Facebook as a good example of anything, and I know the current layout is largely reviled by its users, but they really got posting links right.
When you want to post a link to your Facebook profile, you paste in the full URL. Facebook reads the page and extracts the title, a short summary, and possible thumbnail images. Then you have the normal amount of space to write your comment. Continue reading
Since joining BlogExplosion, I’ve noticed something interesting about surfing it. First, I tend to see many of the same blogs over and over. Second, when I’m actually reading these blogs, by the time I log out all my new credits have been used up by people looking at mine. This leads me to this conclusion:
The only people who see this site through BlogExplosion are the people who are logged in at the same time I am.
If you have a routine where you spend a half hour on BE every evening, or 1 hour every Tuesday, or whatever, chances are the same people are seeing your blog over and over again.
Just to experiment, a few days ago I took 10 minutes late in the day and logged in from work. I don’t think I saw a single familiar blog.
So what’s the answer? Vary your BE routine as much as possible. Don’t assign your spare points when you surf, pick a random time, log in for 1 minute and just assign them. Make a banner and assign points to it the same way. Talk someone into signing up with you as a referrer, and get a share of their points.
Otherwise, you’ll get the same audience every time… and chances are they’re either regular readers by now or they’re tired of seeing you.
In hopes of bringing in some more readers, I signed up with BlogExplosion yesterday. I’ve spent some time last night and tonight surfing through their system, and I’ve seen some interesting blogs, some boring blogs, and some infuriating blogs. (Politics… why did it have to be politics…)
If you’re coming here through BlogExplosion, feel free to skim for 30 seconds or explore as much as you want. This is the group-blog of a twentysomething married couple in California who enjoy computers, sci-fi and fantasy, and comics (OK, one of us likes comics). Each of us has other, non-blog stuff online as well.
Enjoy your visit!
