PCM creative in action

Clean up the Twitter Fake Bots

New attention has be drawn to the numerous fake or spam twitter accounts that follow us. Yes they boost numbers but but they provide no value. Isn't it better to know everyone is listening or potentially listening? It was back in June 2011 that I wrote "Twitter Fly Swatter - TwitBlock" after I was looking in to ridding my followers of spam bots. It was TwitBlock by @TimWhitlock that identified and enabled me to block the culprits. This week Status people came on the scene, a tool to identify fakers with the headlines

• Facebook Has 44% Fake Followers; Twitter Has 33% - Mashable
• Obama Has Millions of Fake Twitter Followers [UPDATED] - Mashable
• Find Out How Many Fake Twitter Followers You Have With StatusPeople - Tech Crunch
• How many Twitter followers do they really have? - Guardian
• How many Twitter followers does Lady Gaga REALLY have? British firm promises to root out the 'spambots' that don't exist - Daily Mail

Quite some press coverage but lets get a little perspective. Bots boost your follow count, this is true. The relationships on Twitter of most importance are those with 'friends'. The ones you follow back. They read your Tweets and you read thier's. We don't control who follows us the only option if you want these bots to disappear is to block them. A twitter count inflated by fake, purchased followers and bots kids no one but your self. Running @pcmcreative through StatusPeople reveals I have 90% Good, 9% Inactive, 1% Fake. StatusPeople only analyses 1000 accounts, just a sample of your total following. Information is all well and good but what about the clean up. This is why I write this post. Social Media evolves all the time with new platforms, tools and services emerging suite of complimentary apps come together. Three apps I now have to verify the effectiveness of the Twitter accounts I own, run and maintain.

• TwitBlock - Finds Bots in fiends and followers - @pcmcreative 14 of 2543
• SocialBro - Excellent Twitter management tool including providing statistics about inactive followers - @pcmcreative has 112 inactive friends and 526 inactive followers.
• StatusPeople - New analytic tool to identify fake or bot accounts in your followers

The greater issue for me is my inactive friends. Many of them are Tweeters with the greatest of intentions but with no twitter passion. Some do ignite some just wait and watch. But I do know who many of them are. The other peeve is accounts with no custom avatar. What about your account? For more Twitter thoughts take a look at Twitterati, FibreCamp.tv's new twitter show with me and Phil Campbell.

Who am I? - Let's get Following with Audiences Europe

Audiences Europe have recently taken me on team to provide social media and associated technologies support and advise. I always like to start by helping network members connect up existing tools and services with Twitter being one of the most accessible in terms of kicking of conversation and 'making new friends in the playground'. Audiences Europe have a Ning network where I have focused much of my time to date helping tweak and shape it in to platform project administrator Rich Hadley can be proud of, and in turn create content for. It's hugely important to feel proud of the network environment, blog look or website layout. Its a great motivator for creating content.

In the AEN discussion forum we exclaimed...Let's Get Following, inviting exisiting network members to post a little intro or just their Twitter name so others could follow them. This was my offering and a bit about my Twitter journey. As folk often ask me what I do this is alittle about who I am, which I think is what matters.

Hello, I'm @pcmcreative on Twitter

I have been a tweeter since late 2007 when I discovered I could maintain and develop connections beyond an event and project. The notion of a continued conversation day to day with like-minded people appealed to me. As a source of information it took a further 18 months before I thought to ask my Twitter network to answer a question I would normaly have 'googled' "What is the traditional gift for a 10th aniversary?" ie Cotton, Lace, Ruby etc. I got several responses infoming me it was aluminium. one suggesting a macbook coz its shell is milled aluminium and one declaring with a emoticon wink "Decree Nisi ;)" From here I knew Twitter was only going to get better.

I have been referred for work thought this 140 character mass messaging platform. Built audiences for online live theatre streams then spent the evening chatting though massaging to complete strangers who then become digital friends as they follow me on Twitter and begin to read my blog. I love it when months and in some cases now, years later I bump in to folk like seeing old friends yet quickly realising we have never met in the flesh before today.

Twitter is special.

This is my Twitter biog.

Social Media starlet, practitioner & consultant. @EquityUK campaigner for independent theatre artists. Slight nut. I love a good cuppa. @PCMprojects coordinator.

Sums me up professionally I guess as much as you can in 160 characters! As I recently discovered writing the Twitter biog for @audienceseurope it is quite an art, one I quite enjoy. Distilling the essence of an identity to create an impression in a single phrase. It's a great exercise.

What are your 160 characters?

What's your story?

Eye's on the prize? Notttuesday, Sept 2011

The presenatation from Oliver Emberton was live streamed to bambuser. Thank you to those who watched live, there were 25 of you and engaged in chat room banter. Thanks also to @PhilCampbell for curating and responding to chatter. Not bad for an iPhone4 with no external mic.

Posted pre-event...

I've initiated numerous hashtags in Twitter for events. They work very well for streamlining conversation and filtering participating twitter peeps. It is possible to track the reach of a hashtag using services like TweetReach but it is near impossible to determine how the twitter stream from an event is being engaged with by the active participants.

Are they picking up tweets as they whizz by in thier 'All friends" stream

There are so many application to access twitter with a mind bending array of different features how can I possible know if a stream is being watch in the way I am in good faith curating it?

I am heading off to a networking/meet up event tonight called NottTuesday and it has a tag which I check in to as the event approaches to get a feel for who is going to be attending. Are they also watching the tag or are they simply using it.

I created this poll to try and find out.

Posted this on Twitter and with the PollDaddy app on the ipad I'll poll the peeps tonight at the event. I'm leaving the poll open. As of the 15 Septmber only 4 had voted; a No, 2 Yes other and 1 Yes Tweetdeck collumn. I also created a saved search on Twitter for Notttuesday.

 

Twitter Fly Swatter - TwitBlock

TwitBlock is a junk filter and bulk blocking tool for Twitter. It scans your followers for nuisance accounts and makes it easy to block them all in one place. You can also see who you're already blocking; something you can't do on twitter.com.

via twitblock.org

How many people follow you on Twitter? How many do you listen to? Friends and Followers, mutual friends, for so many it seems to be a numbers game. I have far more Twitter accounts than is healthy! Admittedly these are for business, clients or pet projects but yesterday I received a lot of what looked to be spam followers. Now my thinking in the past has been, well they won't be listening to anything I say but it's a follower. I had no intention of following these back but then I realised it dilutes the quality of my following. I have always been very proud that I can flick through my followers with a pretty good idea why I picked most of them up. Some I know, some I admire, some I want to meet, some I want to work with, many have attended events I have twitter curated and followed me from there and there are many good friends who I don't see half as much as I would like.

So... after manually reporting spammers last night I asked Google "who is a bot in my followers" and @timwhitlock's TwitBlock came top. 

It found 35 bots in 850+ followers and to my delight only 1 in my friends and that was one of my own pet project which was dormant! So... How about you?

The Twitter Paradox - The Twitter Ecosphere

There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Twitter is a paradox that redefines that old saying to, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it, because it works.”

via www.briansolis.com

The Twitter Ecosphere

Where do you start? This sums it up. We all need a little assistance when it comes to making sense of the social media landscape. This (see above with awe!) is just tools, services and platforms for Twitter! I have a set of twitter tools I use all the time. I'm constantly exploring new ones. Only a few make it in to my day to day working practice. This week will put them to the test as I monitor and engage with the imwithphil media stream across social networks. 

The www.imwithphil.com project bringing Phil and Phylis Campbells from across the world for a party was going to be a media making opportunity but since it has become a relief effort it's going to push social media and it's capability to reach the masses with out a traditional intermediary which is IMHO our generations legacy. Reinforcement from traditional sources is vital but anyone can have a voice.

I'm looking forward to all the Phil Campbell action who every the Phil Campbell, who ever the story teller, what ever the media might be.

Share with me if you are following.

• Main I'm with Phil website - www.imwithphil.com
• Project Twitter account - www.twitter.com/rebuildphil
• Project Twitter tags - #philcampbell #imwithphil #rebuildphil
• Tweet and making media - @philcampbell - Phil's Blog