Do not taunt happy fun Eric Meyer
Every year, thousands of people in the web industry attend the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, and every year, the number of SXSW-specific tweets—way too many quotes from panels, of course, but also “Going to Ginger Man” and “Ballroom A is LIKE UNTO AN ICEBERG”—tend to drown out other discussion in the web-making section of Twitter.
And every year, Eric Meyer, who no longer attends SXSW, is annoyed by all the SXSW Twitter fuss. And reasonably so. Twitter needs to work out a way to send certain tweets to subsets of your followers. (Seriously, guys—Livejournal figured this out how many years ago? It’s time.)
Since Twitter hasn’t done so, I’m trying a new workaround, not just to avoid annoying Eric (although he is a very nice man), but as an attempt to hack together a better communication plan, period.
This year, once my plane hits the ground in Austin, all my SXSW-related tweets will start showing up at @kissane_sxsw instead of my usual @kissane account. Those who want to see my Austin tweets can thus opt-in, and all those who don’t can do nothing and won’t be deluged with “Tihs bar is so quite tonight” tweets over the weekend. Not from me, at least. (I stay out about as late as a teetotaling grandma, so my tweets are pretty tame, but still.)
It’s an experiment in not being irritating. I’ll let you know how it goes.
More and Better Ideas
- Peter, in the comments section below, suggests at-replying SXSW-specific posts to @shhxsw. If everyone who wants to see SXSW tweets follows that account, presto, opt-in tweets. (Hey Peter, since we, uh, share an apartment, you should tell me these thoughts in your brain, dude.)
- Erin Kurtz suggests tagging the most interesting/inspirational/cautionary tweets about SXSW with #sxswlesson—they will then show up at http://sxswlesson.com/. I think that’s a clever idea.
- WD45, aka Clinton Forry, points to muuter, which I now plan to use every week when youse start discussing the newest Lost episode days before I see it. Score.
- Amber Simmons (@ambersimmons) suggests Tweedact. How have I not been using these things all along?! Yes, interrobang.
- Got more Twitter hacks or SXSW communication tricks? Put ‘em in the comments or tweet at me. I’ll collect everything I see here.
Aw. I’m a little teary over here. Kiss kiss!
I’m totally with you regarding subsetting on Twitter. I think it would work about as well if it went the other way. It would be nice to have a way for me to mark everyone who’s at a massive event I’m not attending or live-tweeting a TV show I don’t care about (Oscars, World Series, Lost) or whatever and temporarily mute them. I could even follow people in order to let them DM me but keep them perma-muted so I don’t have to see their 540 daily tweets of Foursquare checkins and biofunction updates. I had thought lists would do that, but they just turned out to be another way to shove more tweets at people, not fewer.
Anyway, there really should be a way to do this in Twitter without having to set up a whole separate account. But I really appreciate the effort you’re making on my behalf! Oh, now I’m all verklempt again.
You’ve inspired me to create an account called @shhxsw — follow and @ it to use it as a public but sxsw-specific channel.
@Eric 100% agreed. I figure if we keep trying workarounds, one will catch on, and then maybe Twitter will implement it. (Although the whole #fixreplies thing doesn’t make me optimistic.)
@Peter Oh, smart! Easier than a separate account. Hmmmmm.
Great idea, I’m going to copy you.
If you don’t mind the shameful plug, my colleagues and I at Substance created a little web site to collect tweeted inspirational moments at SXSW (or not so inspirational moments) all together in one place. Tag your tweets with #sxswlesson and they will show up here: http://sxswlesson.com/.
Again, forgive the web site plug. We’re not trying to profit from this. We just enjoyed the conversations we had with people we met last year so much that we wanted to create a way for people to share what they learned outside their friends list.
Thanks!
I agree that a twitter feature giving us that control would be nice. I considered doing a SXSW account, but after polling my followers yesterday, only one actually said, “Yea, do it” and even she said, “But let me know where it is so I can read when I want to.” Everyone else either said they’d like to live vicariously or that it’s what I’m doing so it’s part of life and to keep it as is.
To be honest, the bigger reason I didn’t go ahead and do it is that last time I checked, if your phone number (for forwarding DMs) is already used on one account, you can’t put it in the admin for another. Thus, I could only get DMs from one account in real time. If my friends missed the tweet giving them my new SXSW name, I would miss half my communication.
What it boils down to I suppose is, I’m going to annoy Eric Meyer.
I’m pretty sure I do that anyway, so there’s really nothing new under the sun. (I’ll miss you there Eric!!)
You know Eric loves me, right?
http://texturadesign.com/blog/2005/01/eric_meyer_loves_me.htm