Comments on: Are we having Conversations or Just Shouting a Lot?

By: TiVo on Twitter

TiVo on Twitter — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:29:30 +0000

[...] a mixed review when it comes to online community outreach (aka “Social Media” – whatever that means). They pioneered customer engagement on a company-focused forum. Yet, TiVo has stumbled in the [...]

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:41:14 +0000

It constantly amazes me how many PR people fail to grok, or are oblivious to, Jyri Engeström’s Social Objects and Social Peripheral Vision. Principals that have been around since the 1940s, taught in sociology class, ignored and instead they take the term “conversation marketing” too literally thinking that it means spoken words.

As to the criticism that conversations are shouting matches and difficult to follow, lack context, meaning and “top sight” – I agree.

I would point you to the work being done by the folks at DiSo, particular their activity stream standard ( just adopted by Facebook BTW ). It is my opinion DiSo activity stream spec will provide the means for meaningful conversations.

By: DaveZatz

DaveZatz — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:00:35 +0000

Yep, a lot of monologues approximating conversation but not quite there. I guess that’s why folks are hopeful Disqus, Intense Debate, Facebook Connect, FriendFeed, etc can tie it all together better. We shall see.

By: Birger Hartung

Birger Hartung — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:12:13 +0000

At least the “core” doesn’t have to shout with all these beggars, so they just keep thier experiences for themselves. They know the true benefits of online conversation. I believe that this is already happening in the online marketing branch. In future important people read, write and conversate much less than today.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:12:29 +0000

I confess – I am guilty! I will try harder…

Great post – thanks.

By: Sheamus

Sheamus — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:24:25 +0000

Fair comment, although I absolutely do my very best to have discussions/conversations on Twitter, albeit in the short/fast nature that the medium enforces.

I’d also add that newcomers arriving late to a conversation and then ignoring it completely or butting in to respond to something at random happens all the time in the offline world, too, and can be just as fracturing.

It may be unique to my experience but I find that commentators *do* return to read replies, more often that not. This can also lead to confusion on Twitter, as many hours will often pass and it can take a moment to wonder what they’re responding too, but the effort is made.

All that said, I concur with your general sentiment. For the most part, and for most people, it is mostly about ‘shouting’, and less about listening.

By: Ricky Cadden

Ricky Cadden — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:40:13 +0000

I’ve seen a few companies doing this properly, and I try to do so with the Twitter account I made for my blog, Symbian-Guru.com. I have a few Twitter searches running, specifically for keywords related to my site. Every day, I take a little while to go through the search results and find people asking about or talking about something where I can help. I’ll then @reply to them in a way that actually answers their question/solves their problem.

Most of the ‘tools’ that are available for Twitter only really succeed in making it more full of spam. The only way to really use Twitter legitimately is to have a person sitting there, IMO.