This post is prompted by the Birmingham twitter “community”’s reaction to what some saw as unethical and “anti-social” behaviour on joining twitter [edit: as the guys from Artsfest say in the comments below, it wasn't an official account. It's now gone.] by the local council’s yearly arts festival, um, artsfest. In short, upon (laudably) starting a twitter account, they (either by bot or someone with a sore mouse finger now) started aggressively following people starting with locals, and it seems radiating out through their contacts lists.

They ended up with around three thousand followees (many very unlikely to be interested in a UK-based arts event) — the sort of thing that gets you a high ranking on twerpscan (this a screengrab of Pete Ashton’s):

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

• Following thousands of people (people unrelated to your niche especially) is not only pointless (you’ll get blocked by people that otherwise might have followed you, your message is useless to many of those people) , but will get people’s backs up. Not a great first impression.
• Even if the twitter account is for an organisation (anonymous, or multi-authored) people need to see that it has personality. Bot-like behaviour isn’t useful — if those thousands of people followed you back, could you hold meaningful conversation with them?
• Twitter is made up of mainly tech-savvy people, pushing your PR message (that they could get from your blog or other channels if they wished) at them is SPAM-y behaviour, it’s shouting, duplicating and attention grabbing. Although there are many people that autopublish their blog links to twitter, the sort of people that will follow your tweets will normally be able to follow your blog on its own — what twitter is great for is additional more ‘personal’ information, nuggets that are exciting or interesting, but not worth a blog post.
• Re-tweeting your main message after each @reply (or aside) is wrong — those following you will get that message repeatedly, SPAM. Very few twitter users will find themselves at your page on twitter, and the tweet at the top is not your “most important message” it’s just the most recent.
• You need to interact, if people send you an @message or a direct message you should respond. Can you listen to thousands of people’s tweets? No, of course not, so don’t follow people unless you need to interact with them. (Using a bot to auto-follow people who follow you could be a time-saver tho’).
• Use tools like summize hashtags.org or tweetscan to keep an eye on conversation about your product, organisation or subject area (you can get RSS feeds of all of your search terms). This isn’t eavesdropping, it’s all publicly shared information, and if you see conversation (negative or positive) then you have a conversation opener with those people talking about you. You may learn some really useful things about how you are perceived — and be able to genuinely help people (always popular!).

• /Message: Ariel Waldman on One Size Does NOT Fit All - "I for one am going to login to Facebook, Jaiku, and Pownce, and turn off the cross posting from my Twitter world. I am going to keep the Brightkite cross postings to Twitter though, which I think actually makes sense." See, it's a _moral_ thing. Go Stowe

Ariel Waldman on crossposting with social media:

Recently, there has been a rash of one-size-fits-all services that aim to provide a solution to “managing” various sites like Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku and Facebook all at once. As with most of my rants, they begin on Twitter and then trickle their way into a blog post - and if you’ve seen some of my tweets, you have seen my personal distaste for these services and the people who use them.

Like me, she sees it a spammy, rude and a little needy. More people are making this moral choice to talk only when they’ve got something to say — which can only be a good thing.

Hat duly tipped to Stowe Boyd, who’s in agreement.

• Technovia: Sound and fury, signifying nothing - "I'm just going to stop posting things that I think add nothing. If I have something to say, I'll stop, think about it, maybe post it when I've dug into it a little more. " Excelent moral stance.
• Exclusive Peek At Nrme: Location-Based Twitter, Without The Noise - Cool geo-aware iPhone app coming "The service could also be especially useful at public venues like concerts, sporting events, or conferences."
• Panorama accused of shoddy treatment of bloggers | PDA: The Digital Content Blog | guardian.co.uk - "In the sometimes fraught relationship between old and new media, the BBC is the latest organisation to come under the spotlight." Good conversation, made better by the fact that some of the Shiny Shiny crew and Jem Stone (BBC) are all in the comments.

Tickets are now on sale (at £35 or £70 if you’re feeling philanthropic) for the two days of Wordpress geekery that will be WordCamp UK. It’s to be held at The Studio (formerly the Orange Studio) just off New St in Birmingham. Saturday and Sunday 19th & 20thof July

I’ll be there, hanging around the “break out room” (or bar) for the most part, and so will around 100 or so or the UKs most passionate Wordpress users. Here’s the event on upcoming.

I’m trying to organise some sort of social events around the weekend, an informal drinky-poos for those in town on the Friday and something more involved on the Saturday night. Any ideas or offers of help are welcome (email me or have a splurge on the wiki)

I’m on the panel for this debate on Wednesday, organised by Birmingham Future, with Ian Taylor, commercial director of Marketing Birmingham and David Clarke. I doubt there’ll but much internet talk, although PR really is very much about the social web these days.

Is Birmingham A Second City? The Big Brand Debate Wednesday 25 June 2008

“Birmingham was the original hotbed of entrepreneurialism, innovation and cutting-edge technology, our ‘City of 100 Trades’ was a proud forerunner in the Industrial Revolution. Since then, we have suffered an image crisis – maligned in the media and the butt of many jokes despite huge strides in improving the built environment, infrastructure, amenities and leisure offer for the city’s inhabitants and visitors.

So what can we, the next generation of city leaders, do to change these outdated perceptions of our city? Is the Second City banner, coveted by a number of other English cities, a positive or negative for Birmingham? If not the Second City, then what are we? The First City for Innovation? The Youthful City? Diverse City? International City?”

I’m not sure if there are places available, or if hearing me is worth £15 + VAT and the chance of missing the first bit of a Euro 2008 semi-final (although the other guys should be good), but you should be able to find out at the link above.

• Hell is other people's status updates, what Sartre forgot to tell you - Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog - By latest Post blog, exploring the fatigue of connectedness. I post it here as unless you are an RSS subscriber the blogs on the Birmingham Post site are somewhat burried.

• Twittering Teddy Ruxpin - I've got a Nabaztag which can speak your RSS feeds to you, but these guys have lashed up a Teddy Ruxpin to speak tweets.

• The Humphrey Awards 2008 - The Humphreys are a competition - run as part of WordCamp UK (Brum 19&20th July) - to find the WordCamp UK's favourite blogs and includes categories for favourite blog theme design, favourite blog content, favourite single blog post and favourite Plugin.

• Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license) - Boing Boing - Cory Doctrow on the AP's foolhardy stance on quoting "Welcome to a world in which you won?t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you?ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish." Can't wait to see a test c