Ah, the dulcet tones of Dennis DeYoung and his pals from Styx. Who could ever forget the monumentally moronic Mr. Roboto? I doubt that even 20 consecutive gold records could wipe that stain from the memory of rock fans.
Why does this gruesome mental image come to me today? Well, my Twitter account is just about to reach the 200 follower plateau and, when reviewing the legions that have chosen to follow me, I’m struck by the large number of idiots in the mix. Don’t get the wrong impression! I don’t know any of them personally, but but upon closer inspection, it is painfully obvious why they chose to follow me. Was it because they’re friends of friends? Did they read one of my earthshaking posts and decide that they had to get 140 character versions of my every utterance? Could it even be that they saw my Twitter feed on the blog page and absolutely had to have more? No, they’ve got bots (robotic, web-surfing software applications) that have utilized their incredible artificial intelligence (AI) to select me!
Well, in this case, it will become painfully obvious to you that AI has a long way to come. What is happeneing here is that, while searching my profile with their exacting logic, they stumbled upon my name. They see Art and they assume that I’m going to be talking about fashion design, graphic design, immortal impressionists, and superior sculptors. In short, they mistake Art for art.
Much like the boys from Styx who misread the American angst over superior Japanese profits in he 1980’s, these bots have latched onto one word and dragged their owners into a Twitter stream that offers them nothing even close to their target. Instead of art, they get retort and lament instead of gold lame.
It just makes me wonder about the Tweeters out there who are so excited about reaching milestones like 500 and 1000 followers. When Styx sang, “I’m just a man whose circumstance went beyond his control”, could they have seen this coming?
So That's Life? 
You’ve Got Another Thing Coming
04/16/2009The learning curve for Twitter is a fine dividing line between growing pains and outright fraud. On the one hand, the concepts and usage guidelines are being written as you read this. On the other is common sense and integrity of the user. In the on-the-fly-world of Twitter, one misstep can spell disaster.
As it pertains to this idea of proper usage of Twitter, two recent items caught my eye. The first is a national story where some gay and lesbian book titles disappeared from search results on the Amazon site. The second is a blog post by Ryan Ozawa detailing the startling growth in Twitter followers by Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hanneman.
In the Amazon saga, authors whose books were suddenly unavailable immediately began a Twitter campaign to voice their outrage over the perceived slight. Almost immediately, a hacker claimed credit for the “glitch” and a new round of tweets began making the rounds. In two days, the rancor grew so loud that Amazon issued a statement saying that they were implementing new measures “to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future”. As for the hacker, it appears that the claims were false and that a hoax had been perpetrated on the Twittersphere.
Meanwhile, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it seems as that Mayor Hanneman’s Twitter followers increase from around 40 to 28,000 in the blink of an eye! Upon closer inspection, it seems that these new followers were gained through placement on a Twitter “suggested user” list. The fallout over this situation has yet to play out but, in my experience, Mr. Ozawa’s keen observations are usually followed (no Twitter pun indented) by legions of less subtle critics.
Both could easily be chalked up to innocent missteps and been dealt with through quick responses. For Amazon, the nearly 3 days of Twitter chatter grew to a cacophony that just couldn’t be ignored. Circumstances forced them to take action and that action was completely dictated by their critics. For the Mayor, the idea that 28,000 tweeters (mostly outside the state of Hawaii) had decided to follow him is being viewed with a jaded eye. Just as important is the fact that since none of these people can vote for him and they don’t have any direct contact with Hawaii residents, who really cares how many followers he has.
The Twitterverse moves fast. If you’re not careful, it will run you over and leave you for dead. In both of these examples, I think it’s clear that decisions were based on reactive rather than proactive thinking. So beware! If you don’t plan your course of action in our tech-savvy world and think you’ll skate by just because you’ve adopted new technology, you’ve got another thing coming.
Posted in Blogroll, commentary, tech | 4 Comments »