Surprised by the Depth of the Stream

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There was a Partridge Family show once in which Danny had thought that he had written a song, but it was really born because he had overheard his older brother Keith playing something similar.

Well, that isn’t it- I just love that song. But you get the idea. Not only can ideas be taken consciously- they can be usurped on many levels. I think that particularly with things that have been hashed over and over by brilliant minds, it is really hard to come up with something original and cutting edge.

On twitter, I dislike the spam, but what I dislike most is that it all comes in the same flavor. I would probably be amused by an autoDM that was original, or a spam account that didn’t use sex and a gas card to try to lure me down that slippery slope. Just sayin.

Enter someone clever.  Jeff  Turner’s new post – YEO- Why Twitter Follower Counts Mean Nothing describes an interesting little experiment that Turner devised. Turner set up two fake twitter accounts: @jwmont and @holachick. Within days, and using a few readily available tools, he had actually given these sham people virtual life, in that they had followers who retweeted their “efforts” and pressed them on the community during the #followfriday tradition.

Good point- that the level of involvement between people using social media platforms should be- in a word- real. You don’t just sit down with the goal of influencing your bottom line- farming- and add followers in the hopes that by playing this numbers game you will convert a certain percentage to your customer base. And, sadly, this is what is being taught- or at least implied- all the time. The biggest sticking point for real estate agents that I have spoken with is this- they want to know that if they devote time to being involved with social media there will be a monetary return. Honestly? Maybe at this point in the game they should stick with shopping cart and side-of-bus advertising, and mailing out their postcards to their real-life farm.

The agents that I know that are casting their bread upon the virtual water are surprised by what is happening. A real community of like-minded people begins to grow around them- people who are hungry to meet face-to-face. This virtual world isn’t a substitute for but a segue to as much interaction as is possible.

So, @respres, I might not have noticed the sex-change that your fake virtuals endured for the sake of science. Honestly? I am on twitter a lot, but I don’t think I would have picked up all of the clues. On the flip-side, they certainly wouldn’t have made BFF status, like my girls the #twitterqueens, and I wouldn’t have recommended them on #followfriday. They would have been in the group that I am observing, waiting to see if I should “unfollow” them.

But I have to thank you for something else. My guess is that spam is going to start coming in several different flavors, now that you have taken the mystery out of setting up false personalities. And THAT might be interesting.

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