Archive for the ‘The New Media Cynic’ Category

Print is Dead by topgold

I love magazines. I love the look and the feel. I know that in most cases I can find the same information online, but the experience is not the same.

With that said, let me also say that I stopped reading magazines for a while. The price kept getting higher for less and less information. Instead of more content the ads were taking over.

This is a result of a cycle. Less people read the mags and revenue falls–so the mags increase the advertising which brings in less revenue from individual ads as the readership lowers–so the magazine sells more ads with less content until the end finally comes and the magazine goes under. How is that for a run-on sentence?

At times, especially now with the economy so uncertain, it seems like this is an unbreakable cycle. Blogs and news sites run stories about the troubles of the print media. People like Rupert Murdoch talk about the shift and suggest charging for online content that was once free. It is the start of a whole new cycle.

Well, I have an idea, and it involves everyone’s favorite price point, free. I put forth that the new paradigm of print is free. For free, people will accept more ads and less content. For free, more people will subscribe to magazines previously abandoned. More eyeballs means that the mags can charge a higher premium for the advertising content. A whole new cycle breaks the old.

Now, before you bolt from this blog calling me an idiot, let me give you some background on how I came up with this idea. It comes from the most frugal person I know, my better half, Effie.

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Alright, you know that I hate marketing spam on Twitter.You know I think the people that think Twitter is the greatest thing since sliced bread are a bit loopy. You know I think the people that think Twitter is a community are well off their rockers.

So, what could I be griping about today?

People. That is what I am griping about today, people. And this gripe plays in to the myth of the community, conversation, or whatever else crazy kumbaya stuff people say about Twitter.

**redundant alert**
Before I get to what bothers me, let me say this, Twitter is a numbers game for most that are on and active. Let me also say that a lot of folks that have accounts are not active. Let me also say one more time that with the growth of third party apps, a lot of people ghost follow a large portion of folks on their list. Okay, one more time, and yes it is redundant. For most people, Twitter is a numbers game more than a conversation or a community.
**redundancy off**

Now to what is bothering me.

I get a lot of emails telling me of new followers. So much in fact, that if I were to respond to them all when they come in, I would be working Twitter all day.  I usually let these notices build up and then handle a bunch at once. Still, if you look at my Twitter account, you will notice that my numbers don’t change much. This is for two reasons.

1. I check out your account and find marketing spam or other reasons not to follow you back, and thus get unfollwed eventually.

2. You have pissed me off by making it known that I am not interesting enough to follow, you just wanted another reciprocating follower.

One is self explanatory. Two may need some explaining.

As I said above, I usually wait to go through my new follow notifications after they build up for a few days. I look through them every five or six days on average. Guess what I usually find. These nutcases have unfollowed me by the time I go through the notices. I am talking days, most definitely less than a week. I did not immediately follow them back, so they dumped me. How do I know this? After I do follow them, I get a notification saying they are now following me back. They did not follow for content, or interest, or just because they liked my mug in the avatar. (who does?) No they were fishing for follower numbers, and when I did not immediately give them another follow, they dumped me like a bad habit.

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Seriously. I was frustrated the other day with Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio. I was wondering if anyone else knew of a good sports talk radio station that streamed on the net, so I turned to Twitter with this:

Anyone know of a good sports talk station that streams at this time that does not have Colin Cowherd as the host?

I got only one response–which says something I have always believed about Twitter, but that is another post. The response I got is below.

adamdavs @RfL_Productions, I recommend http://su.pr/1aAKj1, where you can compare the top 10 web hosting services.

Alright, that is obviously an automated response. Someone is using the Twitter API to scour the postings for certain keywords, which upon finding such words, in this case ‘host,’ they spam with an advert of some type. Who knows if adamdavs is even a real person. If he is, he now looks very stupid.

I doubt he cares one bit. People like this are a big reason I have shifted how I use Twitter. The ‘conversation’ aspect that was so touted at the beginning is just ridiculous now, unless you are one of the anointed. Even then, it is mostly one way. Services like Tweetdeck and the other third party apps make it possible to follow thousands but ignore all but a few, which means your wonderful groundbreaking tweets are heard by practically no one.

That works to the advantage of the types above. Using auto-anything on Twitter usually makes you look stupid. So stop, please.

I am now going top block adamdevs. His bad.