Nov
02
Social Media and Social Proof: On Twitter Lists, Metrics, Mammals and Marketing
First, I’ll give you some background before I get into my screaming, raging rant. Cool? (Oh, and please do not take this explanation as endorsement, OK? Some people have never heard of Twitter and I want them to be able to experience the full force of my rancor just as much as you can.)
Twitter is a social media site. The people who choose to be alerted to your updates (tweets) are called followers. For a long time, your worth as a human being was calculated by subtracting the amount of people you follow from the number of people who follow you.
This little junior high clique-stravaganza was ruined when some enterprising people discovered that, with most Twitter users, if you follow them, they’ll follow you back. So I could wreck the whole hierarchy by following 10,000 people, getting followed back by 7,000, drop all my original 10,000 except for 16, and look like a celebrity. (7,000 people deem me worth listening to, but I only return the favor to a very special 16. Aren’t I elite?)
All this bullshit made Twitter look lame, and it resulted in people following WAY more people than they could ever reasonably connect with. How can you track 10,000 people? You can’t.
Now, in the last several days, Twitter has rolled out a new function called lists. Lists allow you to… make lists.
You could have lists of fellow Etsy sellers or tech geeks or comedians or Torontonians. You could also have lists called A Listers, My Heroes, or Rockstars.
This is about where everybody’s shit got tragically lost. Most people voiced their opinions in the 140 characters Twitter allows for their updates, but a few people have written some interesting blog posts.
Chris Brogan doesn’t dig lists because they’re inherently exclusionary. He’s right. He’s a celebrity in his niche and including Dude A but excluding Dude B puts him in the position of making a statement he doesn’t want to make. If he participates at all, he’s going to hurt some feelings and he’s a nice guy who doesn’t want to do that.
Robert Scoble thinks Chris Brogan is being Mr. Namby Pamby Pants. He says lists are functional sorting tools and if people want to sit in the corner and pout because they didn’t make a Big Shot list, well, man the fuck up. He is also right, except for the Mr. Namby Pamby Pants Thing. (Have you met Chris Brogan? I have, and the man is built like a brick shit house.)
Dave Troy says that lists have permanently changed the economics of Twitter, and has questions about how Twitter is going to deal with derogatory lists (Top 50 Douchebags In Social Media or Worst Fucking Posers In The NHL) and the effect this might have on what people are willing to do to “get listed”.
Ryan Rancatore thinks lists are the bomb because they allow us to follow everyone who follows us. Cause you don’t have to read the tweets, see? You just put everybody you WANT to hear from on a list (public or private) and then you can safely ignore the noise from everybody else. Everybody gets to feel good because you followed them. There’s some merit here, although following everybody who follows you gets you more spam than an Okinawa mess hall.
Here’s what you need to know and it has nothing to do with Twitter
If you sell anything, you are a marketer. And marketers are very, very concerned with social proof.
As human beings, we operate on two levels, the ape level and the Homo sapiens level. The ape lives in a group and has a difficult time functioning outside the alpha beta hierarchy. The Homo sapiens learns how to count before he’s three. Given those two factors, is it any wonder we really dig things like lists?
We need a framework. We need to know where we stand. We need to know where we fit in relation to everybody else. Numbers are a handy way to do that.
More importantly, YOUR CUSTOMERS need a framework. YOUR CUSTOMERS need to know where you stand. YOUR CUSTOMERS need to know where you fit in relation to everybody else. Numbers are a handy way to do that.
When Shoemoney first showed a photograph of himself with his $132,994.97 Adsense check, people went nutso. Much more nutso than they would have had he said, “I support myself and my family quite comfortably with Google Adsense ads.” When Darren Rowse calls himself a problogger, you believe him when you see he has 129,000 RSS subscribers. And when I put that big shiny number in the top right of your screen, I got 4,000 new readers in a month. I guess I get to be taken seriously now that the writing’s on the proverbial wall.
People really like social proof. The social media consultant with 112 Twitter followers and 9 Facebook fans dies broke. Doesn’t matter that she’s actually just above this petty cliquishness. Doesn’t matter that she really knows her shit. The public cares about her numbers and if she wants to eat, she has to care too.
Should we act this way? Should we judge people like this? Should we assign such a high value to arbitrary numbers?
It doesn’t fucking matter what we SHOULD do. As a marketer, ALL you care about is what we DO.
SHOULD we decide not to date a guy because he lives with his mother? SHOULD we reject a job applicant because they smell like dog food? SHOULD we balk when our daughter’s new boyfriend shows up with hair down to his ass and a face full of tattoos?
Irrelevant. We do. And that’s all that matters.
Am I in favor of lists? It doesn’t matter. They’re here, and people are going to use them as another measure of your (and my) success. If we didn’t use lists as a metric, we’d find something else.
People like numbers. Get used to it.
Great post… you’re absolutely right, like it or not lists are here and they will be used and abused until Twitter puts some sort of limiting factor in place, like an option to report spam-based lists. Personally I think it’s a great way to organize the people you follow and share them, regardless of the fact that they will undoubtedly be abused.
Good perception, thanks for sharing it, i would share one thing people misused and abuse social media networks as well as bookmarking websites.
In light of your that, I find it somewhat hilarious that you’re misusing and abusing your ability to comment on this blog.
This sucks. I just started using Twitter and I am confused enough without all this added bullshit. Someone please put me on your fucking list so I will feel like I have some small measure of worth as a human being.
Hugs and Kisses,
Jackie
What’s your Twitter ID, sweetie? I’ll totally follow you, if only for the disappearing parrot. ;)
HA! The parrot has reappeared! Twitter ID is @paperclipjungle and just for the record, I think you rock!
Anyway, how do I get my little parrot gravatar to show up here? It’s pretty cute.
Why would I trust my marketing to somebody who doesn’t believe in marketing? Why would I take social media advice from someone who is “above this petty cliquishness”?
If you can spend all day trying to manipulate people you don’t respect and still sleep okay at night, you’re not the kind of person I’d want to work with.
If you can say, “It matters to me because it matters to them,” and really mean it, that shows a level of respect for your customers.
Chris does fall a little too much on the ‘too nice’ side. I felt bad for the guy this past weekend. I mean, who actually sends someone a message saying, “You left me off your lists?” Seriously. It says much more about those folks than it does Chris, I’d say.
Of course, it’s easy for me to say that because I’m one of those people who doesn’t really want to have to play the junior high school games. (And yes. There are A-listers who, while I know everyone loves them and I’m supposed to ‘cultivate a relationship’ with them — they’re ‘light on substance’ (shall we call it that?) and so I don’t bother. Sorry. )
People can do the list thing or not.
My own issue with it is that I use TweetDeck.
So I already have lists, in a sense, by using my columns.
Now, I feel like I’m forced into maintaining something on Twitter that I already have. So it doesn’t add value for me, it simply gives me something else to maintain.
But they’re here.
So I guess I’ll play along. ;-)
All the best!
deb
Interesting point, Naomi. We can’t escape judgement; it’s in our nature. In fact, judgement is a survival skill; would it be the wisest decision to trust someone with something important if you don’t look at any other indicator? Conforming to a general opinion sure has its flaws, but it does make SOME sense.
But if social proof just builds more success, how do you get it rolling in the first place?
Good question. Unfortunately, I don’t have an articulate answer. The only answer I’ve got is… really, really slowly. Watch for opportunities and exploit the living hell out of the ones that come your way.
But basically, really, really slowly. :)
So far, I’ve just got one, private list set up of my faves. I hate to be namby pamby, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to set up a public list without hurting anyone’s feelings! I think I agree that it feels a little exclusionary.
Yeah, I don’t want to end up hurting anyone’s feelings either. I might just not partake in the listmaking thing .. I feel like I’d just end up reading one list and not everyone else’s tweets.
LOL – I didn’t really ‘get it’ about lists until this post. I thought it was a cool way for me to organize who I am following so that I can get to some of them easier. I follow people I enjoy and then some because they follow me and I want to hear what they are about.
When one person hogs the show with a tweet a minute, I can never find the delightful tweet from the 6 people or so with just ONE TWEET a day!!!! THey get lost in the feed.
I was hoping they’d make lists into overlapping tabs at the top of the page so that i could set up my twitter like my own personal newspaper.
Anyway as a recent person who got lists, I am finding it to be a useful organizer. I have to think about how this is also a marketing tool. HOpe no one is upset not to be on one of my lists! Please accept my apologies
I find it annoying, Naomi, when you are so goddamn sensible.
(caveat for the following – it is my experience as a marketing consultant, not a social media consultant) I would argue that the follower number is not so important _if you deliver results for your clients_, IMHO. I understand your point about _getting_ clients in the first place, but if you can’t sell your way past that, damn, you might want to think about a new career.
Also, thanks for including the NHL. Until Americans embrace hockey in larger numbers, we need more Canadians in blogging.
Unfortunately, the men in this house are Leaf fans, which is troublesome at the moment. Hockey’s a bit of a sore spot at home, so I had to bring it onto the blog. :)
Just when I thought I had this whole Twitter thing figured out, they throw something new at me. Obviously, all this social networking on the Net works best for the folks who have grown up learning to use a computer before they learned to tie their shoes.
Well I think it depends.. I know how to game the system but haven’t.. there’s no metric for engagement.. that shows up on you’re twitter profile.. nor do you learn that I’m #5 for most followers from my state.. what metrics matter depends on what you’re trying to do.. and the game aspect to it seems like diversion that obscures real value.
And you know.. if I, personally, were going to hire an social web marketer.. I’m not going to do it by how many followers they have… I’m going to do it by talking to my marketing and PR friends.. I might even follow them.. and see what that experience is like.. etc. Point is I’m going to use my network..
Ah Naomi, this is why I love you. You cut right through the bullshit every time.
And I’m with @Deb above. I wasted way too much time playing around with the lists this weekend, given that 95% of the time I use Twitter via Seesmic Desktop in which I’ve already built groups.
Thank you! I’ve been reading all the hubbub about lists and wondering what the big deal was. I thought all the heavy users were already using Seesmic or Tweetdeck or some other tool that already has this. I thought there must be something different about it, if it was such a big deal.
Oh wait … it’s not about having a list, that you can use; it’s about sharing a list, so you can show everyone who’s on it. Twitter has always published, “Who’s following me?” This is just publishing, “Who am I following?”
Hmmm … I’m about to give away a billion-dollar idea to whoever wants to build it. Google page rank is based on what pages are linked to what other pages. If you could crawl Twitter groups, what links would you find? Who is on the same lists as Naomi? Who keeps showing up on lists with Naomi, Chris Brogan and Sonia Simone, but isn’t normally considered a marketing person?
Drew,
I think that you’re onto something. How we are connected to one another and who we’re connected with is seriously interesting to me.
That could be another way to measure influence at some point… Isn’t that what we’re all really trying to measure by looking at followers anyway. :)
Great post, Naomi. We human beings are funny creatures, and yes, we love our numbers and our social rankings. Good to keep letting it in, and putting it on our marketing material :)
Steve
It’s nice to hear a Machiavellian perspective (in the nicest sense of the phrase) on Twitter. No communication technology (especially a free one) is only going to be used for “pure” communication purposes. Many of the people who are A-listers these days got that way by marketing themselves early in the history of Twitter.
Lists are the same thing, in my opinion. While they can be used for good or “evil,” there’s no point in trying to ignore them. They’re here, and they do have some valid uses, so trying to ignore them seems like a losing battle.
I have been using TweetDeck for months (which is like 237 Twitter years, I think) and I like their ‘Group’ functionality. I think it’s sort of like using private Twitter lists, it lets you sort people and keep on top of things a little bit better. So I can see the functionality of lists.
I really don’t want to create public Twitter lists of my own. I’m not looking to exclude people, and so I have been dragging my feet. Although, I’ll admit I get a little thrill out of seeing myself showing up on OTHER people’s lists. Who wouldn’t like to see themselves on a list called, “Cool Bloggers” or “People I Love”? So I’m benefiting from lists, but dragging my feet in terms of participating myself.
I haven’t really been following all this Twitter “lists” chatter because I’ve been buried in work. So this was a great read for getting up-to-date on what lists are all about.
After ready this, I logged onto my Twitter account and low-and-behold I’m on 5 lists already! I hate to admit it, but it did make me feel just a little more special knowing that 5 people (out of what, some crazy number like 7 billion Twitter users?) feel that I’m worthy of being listed.
I took the time to create a list of my own – “writers that rock” – and yes, Naomi, you are on it – to see how it works. It’s slow and tedious, unless there’a s list-making shortcut I missed. Could be fun and useful. I’ll be making more lists as the week goes on.
Note: If anyone wants to follow or “list” me (hint, hint), I’m @writingprof – and yes, I do like numbers.
@Drew:
That billion-dollar idea? Already been done. It’s called “Twitter lists.”
Did you thought Twitter was going to be free forever? That the VCs would just keep coughing up cash with no strings attached?
Mark
Naomi-
Insightful of you to link Twitter lists with our human desires for social proof (I say this as a professor…). Yes, Twitter lists are going to be used as social proof— and that’s fine.
Numbers are good too. But we’ve got to remember, not everything that matters can be measured.
We need also to pay attention to things that are not measurable with numbers. That included important things like engagement, which is hard to measure becuase it’s hard to come up with an algorithm for the construct. We also have to pay attention to unmeasurable things like uniqueness of voice, authenticity, and insight.
I look forward to seeing Twitter lists of “people who offer unique voices, authenticity and insight” but there will always be fewer of these lists than lists of ‘social media experts’.
Would love to hear more from you on this.
Twitter Lists: Coolness or Ease of Categorization? at http://AutheticOrganizations.com
Naomi,
Nicely done. Your post explains it better than all the back and forth on Twitter this weekend. What I can’t figure out is why the heck doesn’t twitter just build its own version of Tweetdeck (that’s what I use) which allows for all of this for quite some time?
The only thing missing is the ability to share my list with others.
I am not going to take the time to do the lists on twitter until it gets easier, if at all. Everyone’s comments indicates it is a royal pain.
I do love following smart people tho – and many others who commented sound like people I’d like to follow. Want to post your twitter so i can find you?
@PhyllisNichols – twitter
Can’t wait to see how lists shakes things up. You’re right, it really doesn’t matter how, as long as we adapt along the way.
Just gonna say I rather wish you had a “like” button on your blog like Facebook has. that way when I like what you said (as now) but haven’t anything to contribute (like now) I can just say like.
Or maybe I can do that anyway?
Like.
DUDE! Imagine what my comment numbers would be if it was OK to just go to the comment field and type “like”.
That would be awesome.
Thanks for liking, by the way. :)
Like x2
Nothing really to add except the obligatory “great post.” For reals. :)
@Mark,
The lists are just the data. I’m talking about data mining, finding unexpected correlations in the data. Are there people whose on-list-to-followed ratios are exceptionally high? (ie: followed by 2,000, and on 1,800 lists) Is there someone who followed a large number of people before they went on to appear on a lot of other people’s lists? Are there lists you can be on that bring you a lot of follows? Or unfollows?
Yahoo listed a lot of sites. That’s Twitter lists. Someone is going to figure out how to map the relationships in a way that brings value. That’s Google.
Fatty, follow me. I have a new Twitter ID since I don’t have the Rogue Ink blog anymore and it made NO SENSE. goodinkinc
GO! With as much speed as your fat little fingers can muster!
OMG, NO WAY! We can talk shit about each other in a whole new medium again.
Can this day get any better?
Naomi,
Love, love, love this post! Probably the best compare/contrast article about lists I’ve seen so far! I personally dig lists, and created a nonspam list to wade through the sea of tweets (and quickly proceeded to add you to it!)
Speaking of Twitter, totally retweeting this! Have an awesome day!
Jim, you are a delight to have on this blog, you know that? Thanks for coming. For reals.
I quite like twitter lists. I started doing a bit of work for a local company and I was one of the first to write about twitter lists. Twice for twitip, twice for the think tank media blog. ;) Writing about it quickly sent some extra work my way so I’m biased.
I do agree totally with what CV is saying. I haven’t defined what exactly I do online. I blog. I tweet about my bushwalks and good stuff thats happening. Its flawed, but I try and keep business stuff to DM/email etc. I’m not on many lists but I don’t mind.
I feel uncomfortable with the idea that people like numbers, but it is something I’ll have to get used to. I used to feel uncomfortable with the idea of actually earning money online. I still feel uncomfortable, but I’m learning to live with it as my income increases.
Top post.
- Jade
You hit the nail on the head. If Twitter (or social media in general) is the democratization of the internet, then it;s simply gonna be the members of the tribe writ large that decide if groups are hot or if they’re not, AND what minitribes they want to belong to and who they want to invite in. Your post has brought me a step closer to clarifying what these groups mean in the big social universe picture.
We shall live in interesting times, as the old curse goes,
Dear Naomi – I am new to your blog, but wow, after subscribing to this post and watching the comments float into my inbox all day, I have had a much clearer picture of the implications of what I originally thought was a simple deal – a cool feature to organize your stuff on Twitter.
The discussion has helped me to be a little more mindful of what I am doing. In my rush to set up a list I didn’t actually see that you could make them private and I also didn’t think about the implications of that.
On the Maslow hierachy of needs everyone on Twitter of course will use lists, stats etc in ways that meet their needs. If you are looking for social acceptance you will want to be on someone’s list, and feel rejected if you are not. If you are self-realized and contemplating the meaning of life, and can turn water into wine, your place on a list will have little relevance. So now I really get it. It’s a huge marketing tool for the informed who study HOW people are using lists depending on their needs. It can be a destructive tool for those who lack integrity.
I guess in the spirit of Twitter – where we are all birds in a forest making noise, watching each other, flying here and there, the list function gives us more opporutnity to evolve or de-evolve as a species. Marketing and web experts will win according to how they lead applying their skills to this new metric and unfortunately winning constructively or destructively is equally probable, given the needs of the masses looking to be on list.
Still, I hold hope that the marketing industry will use lists as a leadership opportunity to demonstrate creative genius while moving towards a culture of integrity. Making big piles of cash should be a natural reward!
Your blog is inspiring. Thanks so much!
Carolyn W.
Hi Im new! Signed up for the 5 lessons of marketing and am very much enjoying, thanks for the free advice – you really rock!
I have a question, a bit OT but its about Twitter. My question is this: Do I have to? Tweet I mean. Cause Im still not seeing the point of it and to me its just another waste of time. And if your answer is yes, then why?
Just to explain a bit, my main business is a B2B service provider in the fashion industry. I screen my calls profusely because my business is all about billable hours and Im bombarded with, lets say very unnecessary (I want to say stupid but I think its not good to call your clients that on the interweb, oops), questions all day from my clients who feel that there is no point in looking up the answers themselves if they have me to go to. Im still not in a position to charge for the advise. But my clients feel that they should be able to reach me 24/7 so I did an experiment this summer. I picked up my phone every time it rang and answered every email as it came in. To make a long story short it resulted in 0 billable hours for a 3 week period! Im leaving my business and starting a new one so not looking for advise on that situation, but my point is that I see Twitter the same way, another ADHD distraction from creating actual value.
However, I can be convinced otherwise but I just havent found the argument for it yet. Would love to hear the argument for and against if you know of any good links or if you have written about it, havent found any yet.
@Dimmalimm, I know you’re asking Naomi, but I’ve got a pretty strong opinion on this. I wish all the gurus who say “You must be on Twitter” would get this point: Twitter is one way to engage with your prospective audience, it is not the way.
If engagement with your audience is important to your business — and unless you are a major brand in a commodity business, it should be — you need to decide where you will engage with them. You can choose blog, telephone, Twitter, in-person sales calls, Facebook, TV advertising, MySpace, trade shows, etc. etc. etc. The point is, you can’t engage via all of them. There just isn’t time.
The people who live in Twitter all day and make a living at it are telling the truth. So are the people who live in their email client. And the people who are always on the phone. But no single person can spend all their time on Twitter and all their time on the phone and all their time in their in box.
You should still sign up for Twitter, if only to make sure no one else grabs your name. But now, you don’t have to use it.
Thank you Drew. That makes a lot of sense. And no I wasnt just looking for Naomi’s advice, I appreciate any and all advice :-)
Hi Dimmalimm, and welcome.
Well, there are many topics on which Drew and I disagree, but on this one, HELL YEAH he’s right.
Do you have to be on Twitter? FUCK NO. And trying to kinda sorta be on Twitter is going to be far worse, both for your brand (let’s face it, you’re going to look lame if you don’t really get into it) and most importantly for your personal effectiveness and sanity.
Like Drew said… reserve your name and your business name and then get the hell outta there.
And seriously… welcome.
I too rolled my eyes somewhat when Twitter lists were unveiled. Because as if the endless worries over how many people followed me and how it related to the number of people I followed weren’t enough, another popularity contest to succeed in.
But I think you can probably get at least a respectable ratio just by tweeting normally without any special effort. Someone put me on a list named ‘Amusing’ without any prompting, which gave me a happy. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll just use all my dummy accounts to list my real one.
Interesting post.
To be honest, I didn’t even consider if lists are good or bad, they just exist. Since they exist I felt I might as well use them.
A hammer is bad if you hit someone over the head with it. It can also come in handy if you want to put nails into wood. A list is just a tool.
Naomi, this post rocks this shizzocks & I know you know it. I’m with you – whether we love it or not, whether we want to participate in the new list function or not – we must. It’s part of the evolving culture of Twitter.
I remember being on Twitter when there were no @s & no #s and no real communication happening between users. I was a cavewoman scratching on a wall, in 140 characters. I liked it. Had I said “oh, heck no, I’m not participating in this new @ thing or that new # thing!” I’d have fallen out of step with the community. Lists will evolve the community – and the fact that tools like TweetDeck have appeared over the past few years prove the need in the community – we like being able to organize the data that comes our way.
I wrote a bit more about it on my blog today, referencing this article and thinking some about that other proof, the creative proof, which you have in spades. So creative proof + social proof = longer lasting flavor.
And my personal bottom line on lists, of any kind? Monitor, be aware of them. Don’t base your self-worth on them.
Another great post, Naomi. I haven’t got my head round Twitter lists yet, although I kind of know I’m going to have to. As a relative newbie to the whole social media “thing” there’s so much to learn. I feel as if I could do without having to do the “admin” around lists when there’re so many more productive things to do. Is that me just not getting the point, or what??!!
I’m late to the party as usual, but I just had to chime in on Scoble being the biggest hypocrite. Calling Chris Brogan a namby pamby for disliking Twitter lists because they are exclusionary, while Scoble was the Number One biggest effing whining crybaby to the point of god damned annoyance (for over a month) about Not being on the Twitter Suggested Users List… it’s just ridiculous.
That’s the whole reason I stopped following Scoble.
Awesome post. It doesn’t matter to me if lists ever exist or not, or if they are good or bad, if they exist then one can just use it, just the way I do it.
I completely disagree. I think both Scoble and Brogan are namby pamby whatchmacallits. ;)
You just rocked my world with this post. I work in the social media arena and I HATE that I care about my numbers, but I do. And you basically just reminded me that “it is what it is” and get on with it. Brilliant. (And you are so right about Chris Brogan…if we ever had “Social Media Celebrity Boxing” or something, I would pick him to jump in the ring for sure.)
Great post all the way around…as usual!