Prokofy's dashboard

Totally, totally agree. And I saw this coming. And we have Steve Gillmor and Andrew Keen and Shel Israel and many other A-listers to thank for this. You know why? Because they all block people from following them whom they don't like -- not spammers, not stalkers, but just people they don't like "talking back" at them. They block them so that they don't show up in those people's streams.

But that wasn't enough for them. They found that critics like me kept talking back anyway, regardless of whether they follow-blocked, because we could just look them up in search or see them chatting to other people who were not so thin-skinned as to block followers (truly a stupid thing to do *on the Internet*).

They HATED seeing all those @ replies in their own vanity searches, then showing up in the even more prominent @ column -- they hated it when people "butted in" to conversations with other people (not just A-listers, a lot of thin-skinned, irritable and paranoid types who aren't A-listers hated it to).

So they whined and pleaded, and if they had the devs' ears, they asked them at lunch -- hey, shut that off so we can just talk to our friends, you know, like an adult AIM or Facebook. So nobody but our friends that we WANT following us can read our special feted conversations.

So @ajkeen and @stevegillmor got what they wanted. And Twitter jumped the shark, for sure.

Resist, resist, and resist!

Yes, they show up in search, but you can't click on their name to read the page.

I remember you being quite the problem before in grasping these issues of freedom mdy, so no doubt you're loving this latest oppressive measure, but it will simply mean that people move away from Twitter, that's all. You know, information wants to be free, and all that jazz.

Shame on the Twitter devs for finally caving to this thin-skinned insecure lobby that wants to be gain fans by being fabulous and in public, but wants the ability to prevent those blocked from even reading the tweets page or searching and seeing content.

Imagine if the rest of the Internet ran this way. Imagine if Dave Winer could decide people he didn't like couldn't take an RSS off his page.

The worst thing about this new "feature" is that the devs put it in by stealth without ANY discussion here on Get Satisfaction. Before, you could still read people who blocked you (like arrogant celebrities who couldn't bear if you once said the slightest critical thing to them) and could still then comment on them to them directly or to your followers, but now they show the message "I only give updates to friends" which is actually fake, as they haven't locked their tweets, and they are still public, and still visible to mere followers to whom they have not reciprocated with a follow.

It dumb downs the discourse, makes the A-listers even more surrounded with sycophants, and defines down the concept of friend.

What I don't do is take *you* seriously, as an anklebiter. Bye!

No, you're not understanding but that's because the issues are larger than you prepare willing to admit or realize.

It's not about "fairness" for Scoble or David Gregory or Brad to follow as many or as few as they like. It's not about whether it's "fair" they have more, or whether they "get to" have more.

It's about the process of creating a massive multiperson online community and its rules of the road, and new media versus old media.

I don't need to, um, reassess how I use social media. When I hit the 2000 mark, it's unlikely to faze me as I've always had a more or less 1:1 ratio on Twitter, have grown slowly over months at a time, and it will just keep growing slowly. Big deal. Once again, for the 10th time, "it's not about me," and the constant slams, slights, put-downs, and ignorant judgemental asshattery just has no place in this discussion. There's nothing I "need" here nor am I "whining" about some "loss".

I'm pointing out that it is morally wrong for those saying they live by the rules of new media and social media not to live by those rules.

I'm pointing out that the devs had a way not to punish the slower more authentic Twitterers by simply policing spam and not creating a rule to get rid of spam that harms real users.

I'm pointing out that those who got in before this rule like Scoble could game the system, and those outside like David Gregory can leverage old media fame to game the system, too. So its innocence as an authentic new media experiment is over, and it has failed, as it has merely reproduced old media laws of broadcasting.

No, I refuse to abide by the Forced Migration Policy in which no one can ever criticize, no one can ever object to what the devs have done and their fanboyz like you have approved, without being told to get out if they don't like it. Real life isn't run that way; I fail to see why online services need to be run like Russia and China and not America.

I simply refuse to accept that sort of tyranny. It's unnecessary, and it erodes our freedoms.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/sec...

Once again, you are revealing your intrinsic and unexamined contradictions by first claiming "there are no rules on the Internet" or "there is no right way to Twitter" as a reply to my objections *about government and development* (different) and then proceeding to invoke two harsh and nasty rules, that no one can ever go beyond 2000 or should seek to go beyond 2000 because your limitations mean you can't follow so many people, and your suspicious mind and hatred of those who are different means you think they could only be follower-farmers if they do so.

I'm sorry for the sad and cramped state of your vision of Twitter, and I won't be limited by it.

mdy, dear, I've been on Twitter two years, and you can tell from my number of updates and my followers (1000, 11,000 lol) that I have plenty of knowledge of how Twitter works, and I can read the Help instructions. Duh! Your condescending crap is misplaced, that's all. Knock it off.

Length of time and number of updates and followers are all logical and reasonable markers for "understanding how Twitter works". I realize in this era of the $695 "How to Twitter and Make Millions" workshops that trying to show off your expertise is something you, like Brad down there, need very much, hence your hectoring here.

My points about the problem of a giant feedback loop and the problems of new media and old media are larger and apparently more subtle than narrow, literalist points and "rights" like "people can follow whom they want". Of course they can. I didn't say they couldn't. I'm pointing out that *one way* to avoid the old media effect of broadcasting vs. conversation is to force everyone to the formula of capping -- if capping has to be endured by some, make all endure it to force them to play by new media rather than old media rules. That's all. That isn't a mandate or a request for a feature, it's a political debate. Apparently that's beyond you.

No one has to use Twitter any way or in the new media way. But if people like David Gregory are going to rave about Twitter, and people like Scoble are going to flog new media as the answer to old media's dying, then...we should point out that neither plays by the rule of new media lol.

Sure, people can now even go to an All Top site and read all kinds of breaking feeds from Twitter; they can RSS; they can see websites like mine with Twitter tickers. But...the reality is that most people get most of their Twitter on Twitter itself lol.

The point here is about accountability and consistency of rules and the social mandate here. Those who invoke the rules of new media should also play by them as we mortals do.

Scoble can follow who he wants because he already long ago built up a zillion people following him roughly in a ratio of 1:1 of those he follows. So he can keep going even under the new rules - having gamed it out in the past. The practice of 1:1 follow/following is in fact a Scoble-inspired best practice for Twittering that he publicized everywhere, and *could* publicize and act on at a time when there were no limits on him lol. Honestly, this stuff is visible to the naked eye at 3,000 miles distance. The devs helped their early adapter friends -- it's symbiotic. It's how all tech gets made. – Prokofy, on February 26, 2009 01:34

Some of my comments are pitched over the heads of people like you who are unable and unwilling to think of the broader and deeper issues involved about process and rules and unintended consequences. But that's ok, no need to stretch : )

Um, I didn't lose anything. I don't need 80,000 followers? What would I do with them if I couldn't talk to them? I don't need a broadcasting device. If I did, I'd fight to go on the real-life talk shows I've been on where I'm seen by literally tens of millions of people around the world. It's just not a priority, strange as it may seem to you, who is definitely measuring everything by length and size.

It's not about me, it's about process -- I realize that's tough concept to grasp as it is higher than you.

Yes, the devs, if they realized they could no longer offer everybody the option that Scoble once had of wantonly adding people constantly to get followers back, that they should have announced a clearing of inventories and a rule that all had to live by. The other option was for them to spend more staff time culling out spammers following illlegitimately too fast and with advertising spam.

But they weren't willing to put staff time on this, which is probably expensive, and they weren't willing to piss of Scoble, who would scream about being pruned and capped, so they doped it out, and decided it's better to piss of the guy who started this complaint at the top of the page here (it wasn't me, as it wasn't my concern, really).

As for "usefulness" of following people, wait a minute. I thought we just read from you a magnifient oratory that said that if people have 60,000 followers, they WORKED HARD ON THE INTERNET (your all caps) and it was a marker of particular...Internetness or something. Length and size, certainly, and counting somewhere in the worlds where that counts.

Now all of a sudden it's not Scoble who has no life (he works hard! on the Iinternet!) but me, merely because slowly over months I'd like to add 10s here and there to go over the cap lol. That's the ridiculous thing.

i actually find it quite manageable having the 1000 followers and 1000 I follow because they don't all talk at once : )

Of course there are rules on the Internet. You've invoked about 10 of them:

o people have to have lives and can't let something like Twitter take up too much time -- it's like sex and Puritans
o people who work hard on the Internet get to have more followers
o you can't really pay attention to more than 200 people at a time

You've just told me about 4 rules there that I'm supposed to follow, even as you huff and puff and tell me "There are no rules on the Internet". I think what you mean is that "only *your* rules should pertain on the Internet* and that you, as a fanboy of the devs who thinks like they do, thinks that the rule of 2000 is fair.

I can only say: no, you aren't very intelligent and self-aware if you invoke rules for the Internet, including the 2000 people cap, and then in the same breath tell me "there are no rules on the Internet" lol. There are no rules...except yes, there has to be a 2000 cap LOL. How does that square LOL?!

As noted, the rule isn't fair because it was inserted after people like Scoble made their killings.

@biz could have followed another MMORPG rule like his MMORPG inventory cap. He could have invoked the Sims Online green balloons. He could have said if you don't reply to one of your friends you followed within 30 days, he falls out of your list. Hahahahahaha that would have pruned the A-listers in a heart-beat. – Prokofy, on February 26, 2009 01:21

mdy, please stop lecturing me about how Twitter works, with such smug and literalist superiority. It's truly not necessary. I have been on Twitter for two years. Have you? I get it. There used to be "track" to use -- that was taken off. Yes, you search for the @reply and find people that way. Duh! I know all that.

Following people "the easy way" has been broken deliberately by the devs because of the abuse by some. That's wrong. They should have prosecuted spam, and not capped normal usage.

David Gregory has no *followers' cap* and he also -- because of his 85,000 people -- has no follow*ing* cap -- which is what I didn't understand at first but now that I have stopped reading everyone's speculation and gone to the devs' own explanation, I get it.

The problem is this, again: if David Gregory had come in, and started following everybody out of genuine Twitter civic good will, because he wanted to hear what the country was saying into of broadcasting his own flak all the time, he would have suddenly found himself *unable to add followers* even being nationally known (because of the algorithms that the devs described).

But he didn't. So he gets to keep endlessly having followers without worrying about anything using not the easy methods of follow back or @reply, but the extra-system method of TV. Actually not TV, but major news media online that ran articles about him tweeting. – Prokofy, on February 26, 2009 01:11

It's common for young geeks to be insolent, nasty, and condescending in these discussions. The more you do it, the more you expose yourself, and don't convince others, and certainly not me.

Um, once again, dear, I'm plenty popular lol. Look at my blog statistics if you will which are pretty good for what I am, which is not a tekkie or some expert on TV. I *am* someone who already "works hard" on the Internet -- and I get exactly about what I deserve, which is...1000 followers in two years on Twitter through the natural course of things. That's fine, and if I wanted more, I'd have gone to get them, but I have a life outside Twitter. It's reasonable for me to request of the devs not to artificially cap my reasonable use of their service which works in a completely normal way, seeing an interesting person and following them, not to force follower reciprocity, about which I don't care, but merely in the course of things if they had an interesting thing to say, had a blog, etc. In fact, I had more followers than people I followed because I hadn't made time to "catch up" and follow Twittiquette, which is generally that you follow those who have bothered to follow you, unless of course they are some creepy violent stalker, or some spammer selling Viagra or something. That's all.

It's not about me, it's about the principles at stake here. Scoble got followers on Twitter NOT because of his 20 years in the tech industry. His 20 years in the tech industry *meant nothing to me as an ordinary non-tech person who never heard of him, like most people in the world never heard of Robert Scoble if they are outside of Silicon Valley --duh*. That may come as a shock to you, but I can guarantee you that if I call up the top media people in New York City and ask them who Robert Scoble is, unless they are tech editors, they won't know.

Robert Scoble got his followers *on Twitter*. And he got them because in the beginning, there were not that many of us, who knows, perhaps a few thousand, and you could easily talk to anybody. Scoble followed me because I saw him in the public feed and asked a question -- a transaction was about the public feed and the conversation, NOT about big important Robert Scoble and his 20 years blah blah blah. That was was the great leveller but great emancipator of Twitter. Robert Scoble could follow me, a nobody, merely because I could be an interested -- and interesting -- curious nobody. And that's actually how Twitter magic works.

A number of people I followed in the early days, or follow today, because I'm not a tekkie in Silicon Valley, or just not so much following popular culture, turn out to be famous a-listers. These "Maggies" or "Jasons" who I just thought were "some mom" or "some young guy on a computer" turned out to be A-listers in blogs I'd never heard of, A-listing in a world that meant nothing to me on the opposite coast -- and in this, I am NO DIFFERENT than anybody else. Whoever heard of Michael Arrington? Who the hell is Dave Winer? Why are we supposed to care about Shel Israel? Who on earth is Loic LeMeur? These Twitter celebrities aren't really real-life national or international celebrities but just early-adapting leading geeks. But in the world of Twitter, somebody who heard about this service on the networks of Second Life or Facebook (and not mass media) could follow these people -- and talk back, and start a conversation.

Twitter is about conversation. It isn't about what you are doing. It isn't even about what you are thinking. It's about what you are saying and hearing.

So, sorry, I won't be "shutting up". For me personally, getting over the 2,000 limit shouldn't be an issue as I will just slowly keep going up and up over months and months as I have been as people join from all my networks and readers.

But I *am* concerned about what has been deeply affected on the Twitter conversation, which is that old media personalities like David Gregory can "break the rules" and not have to get followers "The Twitter Way" by a real conversation but is a broadcaster, and that Scoble, who worked Twitter like an old pro who always games things like that through excessive use should get to be a broadcaster because he could chatter all day without having followers, follow lots of people and *keep following them* because there were no caps back in the day he amassed his followers.

mdy

1) why are you assuming that a dev's intention of what they'd like to do already pertains? It doesn't for these people nearing 2000 who are filing complaints.

2) It's different for everybody, yes, because people will have different ratios.

3) Some people, like Scoble got to follow at random and as wantonly as they wished because these caps didn't apply when they joined, and they gamed it for all it is worth; that's how you get followers, and they preached this 'give to get' philosophy on their blogs. Therefore they are today at an advantage in reach, and function like broadcasters.

4) You seem to unable to get at the higher philosophical issues here:

o A-listers who gamed the system before caps were put in are now at a mindshare advantage that only goes on multiplying their broadcasting on Twitter
o Newbies who are from big old media get a boost from having name recognition achievements on old media, not having to slog through and friend one by one through genuine conversations, sharing of links, sparring, comparing, etc. They skip the step of interactivity and get mindshare without doing what the common man has to do.

SOOOOO new media -- social media -- is tainted.

Evil has entered our world.

Read the policy @mdy
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/107...

Yes, I realize the literalism of Biz Stone and you saying "you have have as many followers as you want" -- i.e. if you're popular and lucky, you'll get a lot of followers. But...people can't get "as many followers as they want" if they are an ordinary person, even if they are brilliant and merit more followers, because of a built-in rule against them -- they need more followers to be able to follow more people to get more followers.

No, this isn't "the Internet" where there are "no rules" as one smug fellow told me.

This is not the Internet, where there is the rule of old media, which is popularity from broadcats media for David Gregory.

Here's what it says:

"We've also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can't follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you."

But...even if you have 1900 followers and you follow 1900, you cannot go over 2000 to follow more people until your followers catch up in the algorhythm.

What that means is that if you aren't someone leveraging your fame from old media to get a zillion followers, and if you aren't Scoble, as I was saying, who gamed the system early, you cannot follow people to have them reciprocate by following you (a normal, legal function of Twitter).

That means everybody else besides Scobleizer and Dick Gregory and others like them use Twitter like an old-media broadcasting system.

It seems to me that the rules about speed of following, or limits on number of people you can follow per day, are reasonable. But the capping and formula are not, as they unfairly privilege the Twitterati who got their first, or are famous from old media.

http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/107...

There's the definitive policy as you can see from the makers of Twitter. Yes, there is a cap. This idea that it is "different for everybody" seems not quite the case, as it seems to be we're hearing it's 2000.

No, Brad, you're wrong. It's not a whine because I'm not popular, that's silly. You're constructing preposterous arguments in defense of the indefensible here.

I'm plenty popular, dear. I have a thousand people following me. If I used Twitter, I could have more. I already try to prune the list now and then, and even try to follow everyone who follows me, but I can't make time every day. But I do want to decide myself if I will follow 2000 or 4000 and not sit idly by in a system where David Gregory from old media or Robert Scoble from new media are awarded, ahead of everyone else, massive mindshare because they gamed the system OR given special dispensation from the devs.

I don't notice Mr. Freedom and Endless Friend List Scoble, once banned from FB for trying to port his mammoth lists to Plaxo, who whines constantly about the limits he faces at Facebook (the same as all of us) complaining about this 2000 limit that Twitter now has, that doesn't apply to him. People like this never care about principles and process, but only what they can grab.

How was David Gregory able to rack up 83,191 followers, while he only follows 84? WTF?! How did he get away with that without following 2000 first?! Come on, why is he special? There's no argument for this. NBC Meet the Press gets special dispensation on Twitter? Then, why not, oh, the Pope? If David Gregory is "popular," it's a function not of Twitter, but of the national network broadcast media, which still trumps new media in its scope.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to use twitter, dear. It's a free system. People can use it as they like, adding lots of strangers enthusiastically because they love noisy conversations or going slow with very narrow topics and only like-minded peers -- as long as they follow the basic TOS which doesn't allow for some kind of mass automated commercial spam selling Viagra or something. AND people get to criticize how it is used/misused without being told they are "whiners because they are not popular". Lame.

It seems to me that this idea that people with pre-existing networks that they got from, oh, being the evangelist of Microsoft (!) somehow entitles them to mindshare with their vacuous ideas broadcast over new media runs counter the spirit of more meaningful content and interactions in new media that I thought new media was supposed to be all about. Guess not! But of course it is all things to all people!

You're also failing to grasp the principles of due process and justice here -- failing utterly. So some customers then, as early adapters with mindshare from Silicon Valley already, or from just gaming the system (which they did shamelessly and openly) now have broadcasting networks, not conversations. So it's no different than the media concentration of a Murdoch or a Clear Channel or a Fox news that lefty geeks always rant about as evil. It's the same kind of concentration based on the medium's makers and the corporations giving them a huge leg up of visibility.

Anyone who came later is subject to the 2000 cap -- except when obviously they aren't, like David Gregory who just joined Twitter this last month on the latest hype cycle. That's wrong!. The system's devs should have said, "Look, we can't sustain all this on our servers so we are ending beta, capping inventories, and letting everyone play by these same rules. Then Scoble and Gregory and everyone else would not be able to keep hijacking new media to exploit it like old media, they'd actually be forced to have a conversation rather than a spamming device to drive traffic to their website with ads for computer servers or soft drinks.

No, Brad, that's not true, on the whole. I'm not talking about spam bot. And it's not about "interesting content" for these A-listers -- look at their lists! Scoble sits at his computer all day or takes his laptop with him everybody and as stuff scrolls by, he constantly follows people. Don't forget that the Public List used to be an option on the tabs in front of you, not something to hunt for. That means you could always just go there and watch all the people scroll by and grab some of them every day.

Those people can just look fleetingly interesting, and never even post very much. Or Scoble can recognize their names from some other service, even today, many many people using it are just tekkies and other tekkies' friends, the extended families of Arrington so to speak. So he friends, friends, friends all day long and reaches 20,000 and it snowballs, those people then follow him, and their friends' friends follow him. In order to fill up your list that way, you'd have to consciously go and follow lots of people -- in the normal course of things, you are just going to be able to sit there for hours to hunt and friend people, as your would likely have a normal job, not a tech job that would pay you to do that all day just to show off a start-up.

So Scoble, Arrington, all those people *gamed the system for sure* and are now rewarded with having a *broadcasting system* and not a conversation among equals.

I don't spam people whatsoever. I have more than 1000 followers that have naturally followed me over the course of time, and I follow them, unless I see they are spammers, in which case I unfollow them, and that way I don't get a follower, but that's ok. People like Scoble would never take the time to cull through thousands of "friends" to see if in fact some of them are like "Jenny" who just spammed 20 accounts to me with different numbers about how to have fun in the sun.

Followers are not even about people who click on your links and come to your blog. Some might do that, but what's more important and interesting is the conversation itself in real time about real events, not the endless link farming and having to come back and read a blog. Twitter is not only useful as a blog-touting mechanism to drive people to your blog site.

That's because a number of the early-adapters, which are the A-list tech bloggers of Silicon Valley who flogged Twitter itself as a service and are on the Twitter devs' networks, got to avidly add followers. They were not capped. Some of them collected 20,000, 40,000 or more followers by actively following others and blogging constantly about Twitter in the "early days" of the last 2 years. Today, they can keep those ridiculous amounts of followers, and those of us who didn't play the Twitter follower game even if we've been here all this time are punished while they get to go on using Twitter as a broadcast medium -- and newbies coming along are also punished. Unfair, and manipulative.

Inventories should have been capped equally for everybody and the early adapters not rewarded with such largesse of broadcasting scope. In its beta phase. Twitter should have announced, like any MMORPG does quite frankly, that they have to clear inventories and start over with new rules, and that way people would have been forced to gain real friends instead of playing the friend collection game that Scoble and others played.

If you follow this topic on other Twitter threads, you will find the customer service people explaining that they instituted a new rule. You know have to *first* gain 2000 followers, then you can go on following other people beyond 2000, and it works on a formula, add some, add some more. But...the way that the power-users got their huge lists of followers was by...following.

crystal, that's pretty shabby, because @biz and you all there let your little pals from Silicon Valley rack up the following as rapidly as they wished, which is how they increased their followers, duh, using the @scoblelizer formula of just plucking every single person who could put 140 characters together coherently out of the Public feed and friending all your friends' friends. If an online game did this and nerfed the newbie characters' powers so drastically and let oldbies have such a gigantic advantage the newbies would all flee that MMORPG. Maybe that's what you're hoping. – Prokofy, on February 25, 2009 01:20

I'd like to ascertain whether this is a rule about not being able to follow 2,000 at once, or a cap on a certain day, or cumulatively, only 2,000 period.

If so that is HUGELY unfair, as @biz and company let @scobleizer have gadzillion followers and all the rest of the A-listers from Silicon Valley who just seized it as broadcasting pulpits and to show off their collections of fanboyz to each other. This is really wrong if true. There should be numerous people protesting -- why aren't they?