Twitter

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Looks like you have Twitter spam. Go through your friends and if you don't know them, block them.

When people you follow comment on Twitter, it shows up on your Twitter page because you are following them.

I joined, DK, but I don't find it very useful. I figured it was like MySpace bulletins -- the more people following you, the bigger your audience. I ran an advertising campaign to ask for votes in the P&E Poll on MySpace. I sent out private messages to ove 500 friends. When two-thirds of these messages remained unopened, I stopped. I now realise that MySpace friends do not open their private messages and do not read bulletins.

I think my twittering days will soon be over and I won't be spending much time on MySpace either!

Shelagh, I feel the same way about MySpace and Twitter.

I update my MySpace page but I don't know why I bother, and I just don't get the point of Twitter. People seem to befriend you or follow you and then never speak to you again.

I guess we begin by joining every site that will have us, and then we figure out which ones are useful/enjoyable and end up focusing on a handful.

I don't quite get Author's Den either. The site description says people can interact there, but I haven't figured out how.

The problem with MySpace bulletins is partly the fact that they only stay visible on the scrolling list for a few moments. Odds are pretty long the right people will see them.

Shelagh, how do you know whether people are opening their private messages or not? I saw a lot of requests from a lot of people for votes. But once I voted, there was no point in reading more messages when I'd already made choices in the same category.

Twitter seems to be valuable for some people and apparently those with the "right" followers get responses. Responses are hard to measure, though, unless you comment or DM back to the person or leave a comment on the blog they mentioned on Twitter showing you were there.

So far, social networking is taking up more time than it's worth since it's drawing few people to blogs and having little impact on book sales.

Malcolm

P.S. Gina, what I want to ask on Twitter but can't is if you people who are following me aren't interested enough to stop by my blogs and get involved, what the heck are you following me for?

Malcolm wrote:

P.S. Gina, what I want to ask on Twitter but can't is if you people who are following me aren't interested enough to stop by my blogs and get involved, what the heck are you following me for?

It's odd isn't it. They seem to want the updates that tell them you blogged, but don't go see what it was that you actually wrote. Where's the fun in that?

I like authorsden and have had a good amount of interaction on my site. I put on quite a variety of stories and find it useful to know what is read the most. Some of my lighter writing like my poem about cooking and my story about the red convertible have gotten the most hits and comments, which has been quite surprising since I usually don't write either poetry or fiction. Once in a while I'll get a review by another writer which has meant a great deal to me. I do have to pay for my authorsden site, but that is one of my few writing expenses so I'll deal with it.

Carol

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Merri,

I have found the feedback very beneficial and try to respond. There are some people who follow the site as well. Phil here is one and I find that a compliment as well.

The site gives a lot of statistics, but I'm not sure it helps sell books. Sometimes I'll talk about the beautiful covers my sister-in-law has designed for me and tell people to check them out on my website. Having an unusual name helps as all someone has to do is google on my name and my site comes up.

Carol

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I'm on Twitter but my posts are ways for me to vent about work. Kinda boring. I follow John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton and the folks at JPL.

I am on MySpace but my author friends are on Facebook so I have a page there. Grrrrrrrr.

Malcolm wrote:

Shelagh, how do you know whether people are opening their private messages or not?

If you check your sent box, you will see all the messages that have been "read" and all the ones that have been "sent" (unread).

I really did send close to 500 messages, one at a time -- it took days, not hours. Less than 20 friends replied. Over 300 messages still show "sent" next to them.

Shelagh, my email box will show a preview pane without me having to open the actual email. This is to prevent viruses and such. I read the email in the review pane and then click on the link or go to the website and do what needs to be done. I voted but it might have looked like I didn't even open my email. Just letting you know how it works for me. Maybe others too.

About Twitter: Help!!!! If you blog or comment on someone's blog does it show up on twitter or do you have to actually go to twitter to interact? I thought that twitter just let you know what was going on and let others see what you are doing in other places on the net, not necessarily twitter. Did that make any sense?

Hi Sue,

Thanks for voting. My comment wasn't a complaint. I was a top ten finisher in the 2005 P & E Readers' Poll mainly because my MySpace friends voted for the cover of my book, Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine. Those same friends would have voted again but they don't check their messages on MySpace on a regular basis. Neither do I. These social networks seem to have a short shelf life same as everything else in the virtual world we now all inhabit.

We did very well in the polls and Forever Friends will be a top ten finisher in both the Anthology category and the Book Cover Art category. This time, however, it will be thanks to all the members of the Published Authors Network who voted. When the results are out, I will be sending thankyou messages to all concerned.

About twitter: you have to join and you have to post links to your blogs but they don't stay up on your followers pages for very long and they will probably miss them -- the more people you follow, the faster the rate of new twitter comments appearing on your page. Following is reciprocal (the polite response to a new follower is to follow that new follower), therefore the whole thing speeds up the more followers you gain because you follow them and the page soon fills up with comments. That may sound very complex but the bottom line is: you end up talking to yourself and wasting your time.

I try to follow those who follow me. The problem is many of them are into things that don't interest me, so my scrolling tweets quickly get jammed up with messages of no consequence. So I unfollow those people and really hope they'll unfollow me because they're not clicking on my links anyhow.

Some people get unfollowed because they're too prolific, usually with a lot of inane stuff. One person typed so many tweets that they pushed all the other tweets off my pages. Seriously, I don't expect to straight screens of stuff from one person that sounds like chatter over the back yard fence. :-(

Malcolm

I twittered one time but quickly decided my time was being frittered.

Malcolm wrote:

One person typed so many tweets that they pushed all the other tweets off my pages. Seriously, I don't expect to straight screens of stuff from one person that sounds like chatter over the back yard fence. :-(

I had one like that... she tells everyone when she's going to do her laundry, wash a dish, buy flour. I knocked her off my list when she started talking about her bathroom habits.

Hi, Shelagh and Malcolm!

Shelagh, I didn't take it as a complaint. I didn't realize until you made that comment that it could look that way to others: that I was ignoring them. So the explanation wasn't just for you, it was for me too.

Malcolm, I have gotten to the point where I don't follow someone unless they have something to say that interests me. So you can see why I only follow 7 or 8. *grin*

Hi Sue,

Next time you log in to MySpace, click on your "Sent" mail. This is an example of how it will look:
Listing 11-20 of 416

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Date:To:Status:Subject:

	11 Jan 2009, 00:39	Ruth [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Sent	Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll
	11 Jan 2009, 00:38	Russ Heitz - Suspense W… [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Sent	Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll
	11 Jan 2009, 00:37	Russell & Blake [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Sent	Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll
	11 Jan 2009, 00:36	Rune [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Sent	Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll
	11 Jan 2009, 00:35	RuM EN CoKe ^..^ [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Read	Preditors and Editors Readers' Poll
	11 Jan 2009, 00:34	Rose Of Dawn [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]	Read	Preditors and Editors Readers'

Listing 11-20 of 416

Only two of the messages I sent on this page have been read. All twenty-odd pages are more-or-less the same because my friends have not checked their private messages (Sent means not yet read).

Thanks for the post, Shelagh.

Yep, that is how mine looks. I get notifications of my Facebook private messages in my inbox on my mac. I usually go from that to wherever the link is to go. I then go into my facebook or myspace and just delete the messages because I have already read them or dealt with them. Since I am on facebook and myspace too, anything I get on FB I just delete on myspace with out even looking at it. That way I spend less time on both and still get to participate in the things people send to me.

Dick, just love your humor!

Gina, you mean you didn't want to know what, when, where, and how? *Chuckle* I wouldn't either. LOL

No Sue, this is not your Inbox. This is an example of your Sent box -- messages you have sent. The messages listed above were all sent by me. Only two of those sent messages have beeen read.

As I said: Next time you log in to MySpace, click on your "Sent" mail.

I guess I will have to stop posting to groups or forums. Evidently I am not getting across what I mean.

When I said, "Yep, that is how mine looks" I was referring to my sent box. Then I went on to explain about why in 'your' sent box mine would still say sent instead of read. I hope I explained that adequately. *sigh*

Sue Sunshine wrote:

Thanks for the post, Shelagh.

Yep, that is how mine looks. I get notifications of my Facebook private messages in my inbox on my mac. I usually go from that to wherever the link is to go. I then go into my facebook or myspace and just delete the messages because I have already read them or dealt with them. Since I am on facebook and myspace too, anything I get on FB I just delete on myspace with out even looking at it. That way I spend less time on both and still get to participate in the things people send to me.

I can see why your husband has problems with you always being right, Sue. Your response above is all about your inbox email messages. Malcolm asked how I knew that my private messages on MySpace were unread. Nothing about inbox messages to my email, MySpace or Facebook. All about messages I sent out to my friends on MySpace, most of which have not been read. Like you, they probably deleted the email notifications without checking the messages. That was my point.

You proved my point with your explanation and then sighed because you thought I didn't understand! Do you do this to your husband all the time? Give him a kiss from me -- he deserves it.

It becomes more apparent every day that the chief purpose of the Internet is to drive everyone out of their mind.