10 August 2008 ~ Comments

Cross-Posting Etiquette: The Evils of Ping.fm and HelloTxt

Tech

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A little while ago, I did a post on using Ping.fm without spamming FriendFeed. This was followed up with a post by Andy DeSoto, where he talks about whether this Ping.fm cross-posting is saving time at the expense of others. Now, I know there are a lot of people in the social media community who are against etiquette and I totally understand where they are coming from. The problem is there are some things that you can do that make you look like a very bad and inconsiderate person.

There are people that I am really interested in following. I want to be aware of things going on with them. That’s why I follow them. I hate to see these people tarnish their image by abusing community technology tools. Social media is about being social. You have to listen as well as talk. Services like Ping.fm and HelloTxt are very powerful and can cause a lot of damage to this interaction in the wrong hands.

Using an ‘@’ symbol in Ping.fm

Are you serious? As Andy pointed out in his post, the ‘@’ is pretty specific to Twitter replies and doesn’t really translate to other services. Even in the rare case where you might be talking to a person who actually exists on two or more different services, why would you ‘@’ them on all of them? I don’t need to see your Twitter ‘@’ replies on Identi.ca. The person you’re talking to don’t live here and nobody can piece together what you’re talking about.

Your follower count is 0, Zero, Zilch

Are you broadcasting to a service where you are following 0? Nobody? Nadie? Why would you do this? I know I’m new here and all, but having a large number of followers and a low (nonexistant?) number of people you’re following is the mark of a spammer. I understand that you may not be active on every service, but come on. You didn’t even try. People may be interested in what you broadcast and then totally reversed once they see you are not listening.

You Never Check Your Updates

Have you ever received a call from an automated message? Annoying, isn’t it? If you are not available to speak to me live, why the hell did you call? I figure that most of us use Social Media to connect with others, but how are you doing this effectively if you don’t even respond when people try to engage with you? When you broadcast to a service, people expect that you are actually there. You are available for discourse. When you don’t respond, that leaves people with a bad impression.

Step Your Game Up

We can’t all be on every service all the time. It’s just not possible unless you’re a robot or you have some slick software yet to be released (I can haz beta key, please?). You have to set realistic goals for interacting with the community. It’s fine if you want to jump on every new service that comes out. Go ahead, play around with it. That’s what we do, right? Here are some basic guidelines to help you out:

  • Do not plug every service you have an account with into Ping.fm or HelloTxt just because
  • Do not make Ping.fm your primary method for using Twitter or any other specific service
  • Do not ever use Ping.fm to send an @reply. Period.
  • If you are not going to check a specific site at least once or twice a day, don’t broadcast there

Think about a person you would just love to have a discussion with. You have followed there blog or maybe heard them speak on a podcast. You would really like to get into this person’s head and here they are right in front of you! The problem is, no matter what you do to get their attention, they ignore you. They have a megaphone in hand and they are shouting at someone you can’t even see. Other people nearby are looking at this person like they’re crazy. Now, turn things around. Are you the nut job with the megaphone?

Stay Tuned

This post is not aimed at anyone in particular. I just felt compelled to share because I really hate running into situations where very interesting and intelligent people are misusing these services and probably don’t even know it. I took Plurk out of Ping.fm because I never go there. I dislike it immensely, so it would be wrong to continuously post there. Be considerate of others. This is a community, after all.

Far be it from me to call someone ashy without being able to provide a little lotion. There are many ways that you can make your life easier in keeping track of all these different micro-blogging services. I plan to share them with you at a later date, but this post has become entirely too long and I got updates to check.

Get the next installment here: Being Everywhere At Once

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  • Nicely put! I agree & can relate to what you're saying here, especially the "@" scenario. We all need to start using all these social media tools more wisely & think before posting; it will save us all a lot of embarrassment.
  • Exactly. Once you make mistakes with these tools, you can't really take it back. Your image could be damaged.

    Thanks for dropping by.
  • It's so hard not putting the cart before the horse. I have to apologize if/when I do the things listed here. The one thing I don't want to be is inconsiderate. I'm taking Ping.fm off my one-way cellphone now...

    <abbr>solacetechs last blog post..Keeping the Madden Tradition</abbr>
  • Nice post; I agree with you on all accounts. I only have Ping.fm hooked up to Twitter and Plurk. (Well, Facebook/LinkedIn too, but there's a special trigger I use for that, rarely.) I only use Ping.fm to save a little time when I'm going to be posting the same thing to both services.

    <abbr>Wills last blog post..StumbleUpon Down</abbr>
  • I agree with Sarah, too. I came across Ping.fm while looking for such a service. In the beginning, I was hesitant to add my user name and password to another, though have finally come around to needing the convenience.

    I also agree with what you are saying about Twitter. When in consideration of SEO strategy, I find it more beneficial, at first, to have more followers than to follow. On the other hand, I post the link of all that follow me on a blog that will provide them with the exposure to out of network followers - it balances and I saw my twitter on google for search terms in about 24 hours. Plus, not all use Twitter in the same fashion. If I want business or political updates, then I do not want to follow someone that is posting when they take naps and feed their cat. So, not spam - just SEO - dislike of clutter, too. I prefer to communicate with Twitter friends on networks as well.
  • jlawshe
    I have doubts similar to what you're expressing here. But I think Ping.fm has a place for non-spammers. I am using it to crosspost, and I think I violate some of the principals you've laid out here. But my theory is that good communication relies on speaking the language of the people you want to reach. So if a lot of my friends are using MySpace but I mostly use Facebook, it makes sense to me to focus on building my network in FB but still use a tool like Ping to make sure I'm reaching those who choose not to be on FB.

    I think it's more important to be mindful of the content you're pushing out... and less important to focus on a narrowly-defined set of technologies. If software and hardware are any indication, standardization and cross-platform compatibility (or maybe 'aggregation' in netspeak) are the way things will continue to trend in the future.

    Exclusive loyalty to your Twitter network or your FB network or your MySpace network or whatever is just a preference for a particular brand... the real meat of the issue is whether you're communicating interesting content in an authentic way with people who know and trust you.
  • This post is somewhat dated, but the content is still valid. You definitely bring up some good points. It all really boils down to not acting like a robot. I don't use Ping.fm as much as I used to, but that's mostly because it just hasn't been very reliable for me lately. :)
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