Comments on: Friends versus Followers: Twitter’s elegant design for grouping contacts

By: shadeira

shadeira — Thu, 27 May 2010 23:22:17 +0000

sad i want celebs 2 follow me

By: shadeira

shadeira — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:22:17 +0000

sad i want celebs 2 follow me

By: Data Recovery

Data Recovery — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:07:23 +0000

This is a sketch.

By: Data Recovery

Data Recovery — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 08:48:04 +0000

Clearly, writing retreat is good for you. But too, it is good for us readers

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:33:16 +0000

where's this photo from?

By: juanpollo

juanpollo — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:36:31 +0000

it sucks balls

By: puting

puting — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:24:19 +0000

thank you for sharing.i wish i could translate it into Chinese.

By: BS

BS — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:16:31 +0000

Though I understand the many benefits of anyone being able to follow one's tweets, I'm not really a fan.

I have very different "lives" that don't overlap and which I don't WANT to overlap. I don't need professional contacts knowing what I'm doing with my family or in my spare time; my family and friends and work colleagues don't need to know the esoteric conversations I have regarding hobbies I may have like sci-fi TV.

BUT, if I had to email a work contact from my personal email address at some point and they search their address book for potential Twitterers, I now have a professional contact - perhaps someone I hope to work for or work with - reading all the minutia of my personal life.

I don't like it at all and while I was hoping that an app like Tweetdeck would allow me to group and segregate my followers, in fact it only allows me to segregate those that I follow. And now that I have people from all walks of my life, tuning into my tweets, I can't interact on any level, with anyone, the way I'd LIKE to.

So, nope, not a fan of current paradigm. Barring creating 3 or 4 separate twitter accounts, there isn't a way to do this AND there is no app that I'm aware of that would allow me to manage multiple twitter accounts. If there is - PLEASE tell me!!

By: wof

wof — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:43:20 +0000

most of our followers are trying to get more followers for themself and only friends are actually following our stream. http://twitter.com/wof_fi

By: faisalmajeed

faisalmajeed — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:29:54 +0000

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By: idontlikewords

idontlikewords — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:43:44 +0000

Late to the party here, but I just referenced this post in a discussion of Facebook's massive butchering of a similar issue, re: how to manage status updates among friends, followers & "business" entities:

http://www.antinomian.com/2009/04/03/wtfacebook/

By: Engago Team

Engago Team — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:26:37 +0000

Friends or followers:
9 Methods to increase your relationship with your online relations for lead generation or sales http://bit.ly/unX0

By: Leland

Leland — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:42:48 +0000

Excellent excellent ideas and post Al. Really you are completely correct. Facebook need only slightly expand it's broadcast system and twitter may have some serious difficulties.

Our company is working on a blog oriented plugin/widget/application right now that will include some social elements similar to what facebook and twitter are currently using. I would love to get your opinions and thoughts about our current social system but i'm not sure how to initiate a dialog with you.

By: seanomalley

seanomalley — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:43:17 +0000

One of the original two-way friend networks was instant messaging. You might recall that the design was a bit more nuanced than you've outlined. In the case of IM:

1. You’re friends
2. You’re not friends
3. You're friends (but you appear always offline)

One of the reasons #3 was developed was for those cases where you wanted to accept someones invite (so as not to insult them) but you really didn't want to talk to them.

In the end, i think both 1-way and 2-way follow models have their place but what is clear is that 1-way follow models have less friction involved and thus drive more connections. Is that a good thing? Sometimes;)

By: eas

eas — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:16:06 +0000

But for a lot of people, the social part of slashdot was pretty tacked on. Livejournal on the other, like Twitter, was about communication and self expression, and they had the Twitter model.

In any case, I appreciate your post, and it couldn't be better timed. We've just been discussing this sort of thing for a product we are working on.