For the last few years we’ve been beaten over the head with the idea that your company should be involved in social media. And to a large extend I agree.

But you need to be careful WHO is involved in social media for your company. If for example, your chairman is a hot headed moron who’s likely to post the literary equivalent to a temper tantrum for all the world to see, he might not be the best candidate.

Thankfully, Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans and majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers has provided a great case study for you and your company’s CEO on what NOT to do.

Background

For the non-sports fans in my audience, allow me to set the stage for Mr. Gilbert’s meltdown. LeBron James, one of the two best players in the game, and almost certainly a future Hall of Famer was deciding where he wanted to play basketball for the next several years. James had played for the last 7 years for Gilbert’s Cavaliers and as an Ohio native, was the home-town hero.

The Mistake

Unfortunately for Cleveland, LeBron decided to join his friends in playing for the Miami Heat. In response, Dan Gilbert posted a letter (as seen below) to Cav fans on the team’s website.

click for full view

Agree or disagree with LeBron’s decision, love him or hate him, you can’t tell me Gilbert’s letter improves the image of the Cavs or Quicken Loans.

While I can only imagine the frustration Cleveland fans must be feeling right now, Gilbert’s letter lectures calls LeBron selfish, narcissistic, heartless and a traitor. All of that for choosing to go “work” with his friends in what he deems a better environment.

By using such strong language Giblert doesn’t help improve his company’s image (which should be the goal of all social media efforts), but rather makes it seem like they’re led by a unstable hot head who lashes out when things don’t go his way. Not to mention the fact that we’re still talking about a GAME. James didn’t betray national secrets or abuse kids or kill puppies on his way to the podium last night. He simply didn’t make the decision Gilbert wanted.

The Problem

Given Gilbert’s reaction to bad news, it’s no surprise there were no Quicken or Cavalier employees around that were willing to tell Gilbert the letter was a bad idea. While it’s great for CEO’s to be excited and engaged in social media, there HAS to be someone that can prevent debacles like this before they start.

Somewhere along the line last night, Gilbert needed an employee, whether someone from PR, Legal, a member of the social media team or hell, even the IT grunt (come on dude, at least change it from comic sans!) who posted the letter, to step up to the plate and challenge the idea. “Excuse me sir, but is this REALLY the face we want to show to the world right now? Can we maybe tone down some aspects of the letter and make it seem a little bit more positive in nature?”

Sure that version of the letter might not have made many Cav fans feel better, but it also wouldn’t have given the rest of the world the mental image of the chairman of Quicken Loans thrashing around on the floor kicking and screaming because he didn’t get the toy he wanted.

While the twitter rep for Quicken might think the letter show’s Gilbert’s a “passionate guy” I’m certainly not the only one who was repulsed by it.

And those are just some of the fan reactions! I don’t know about you, but my goal for social media is NOT to have people questioning the sobriety of my company’s chairman.

So yes, many companies DO need to be involved in social media. However, you also need to have systems set in place to make sure the engagement is positive, and helps improve your company’s image, rather than damaging the brand. If your CEO wants to blog, fantastic! But you’d better have the balls to intervene before he or she throws gasoline on a fire. If you can’t do that, or your CEO’s ego won’t allow that, you’d probably be better off if they avoided social media like the plague.

P.S. Yes that’s me throwing some sort of tantrum when I was younger. I’ve grown up since then, something it appears Dan Gilbert hasn’t managed to accomplish.

Mahalo, the incredibly successful spam factory, has apparently decided to rob their writers blind.

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, Mahalo has a TON of content much of which is written by hundreds if not thousands of writers. These writers HAD been working under a revenue sharing model which meant if their pages did well, they got a cut of the Google AdSense profits.

Naturally this was an appealing model for many writers, as an article written today could turn into a passive income source for years to come given how well Mahalo ranks in the search engines! Not a bad gig right?

Just one problem… Mahalo has decided to end the revenue sharing program effective June 30th.

They’re not closing it off to new writers, or even closing it off to new articles. They’re ending the entire thing.

So writers who have put in countless hours of work creating content for the site, will no longer earn the income that was promised them.

Where I’m from if someone doesn’t pay me the agreed upon price for my work, I call that stealing.

Mahalo’s Response

Jason Calacanis, Mahalo’s founder, has responded to the criticism of this move in several places. Unfortunately, none of the responses actually address the fact that his company is stealing money from the pockets of the very people who helped build his site.

Writers Will Earn More

Jason’s first defense is that this model will actually help most Mahalo writers earn more money. While that might very well be true, it still sucks big time for anyone who wrote content under the old agreement. Calacanis in fact admits this saying “The small number of folks who had the killer revenue pages are going to be disappointed.”

Calacanis’ admission that Mahalo will be “disappointing” writers with high revenue pages is astounding given his vehement denials of the allegations.

The Writers Wanted the Change

Jason claims they did this “because 19/20 writers voted in favor of getting paid a flat rate over revenue sharing.” While that could also be true (I’d be interested in seeing where that vote took place), it doesn’t change the fact that ALL Mahalo writers are no longer receiving the payment they agreed to when writing the content.

The Content is Creative Commons

I’m not sure why or how, but Calacanis somehow got it into his head that this whole issue was about what license Mahalo uses for the content. The license Mahalo uses has absolutely nothing to do with the agreement between Mahalo and the writers creating content for them. Let’s move on.

These Accusations Are Lies/False

Calacanis has responded in several different places stating that the accusations being leveled against Mahalo are “lies”, “false”, and just made “by one person who is upset we changed models.” In one tweet he pointed me towards a Mahalo post about the change asking me to check the facts. Unfortunately for Calacanis & Mahalo the blog post announcing the change only supports the allegations against them.

They ARE ending revenue sharing, and they AREN’T offering writers any alternative. That’s the accusation being made, and Mahalo’s own post doesn’t do anything to dispute it.

And, throwing doubt on Calacanis’ claim that these accusations are being leveled by “one person,” a Mahalo question page was created by a different writer than the one mentioned in David Porter’s post which brought the issue to my attention. While someone at Mahalo attempted to silence the critic by deleting the post, the magic of the internet and a quick screen shot by @neyne preserved it.

(...Click for full view...)

And if that’s STILL not enough to convince Mr. Calacanis that several writers are upset about being ripped off, this comment on Mahalo’s own post was deemed helpful by over 25 other Mahalo members!

(...Click for full view...)

That certainly doesn’t sound like it’s just one rouge writer causing trouble for Mahalo.

This is an SEO Conspiracy

Just about any time Mahalo is criticized, Calacanis claims it’s just a bunch of angry SEOs trying to get back at him for criticizing the profession several years ago. While it is true that many of Mahalo’s critics are SEOs, I personally could care less what Calacanis has to say about the industry. Stealing from hard working writers just to improve his bottom line, now THAT I have a problem with.

A Way Out

Obviously Mahalo has a right to pay new writers however they want. If new writers are willing to work for peanuts and a copy of Calacanis’ self produced rap album (I’m making this up folks) that’s fine by me.

However, these writers produced content under a specific agreement and that agreement should be honored.

I’m no lawyer but Mahalo’s actions certainly seem to be a breach of contract.

Instead of treating the very people who built his site like crap, I would urge Calacanis and Mahalo to honor their initial agreement for all articles created under those terms.

If they’re absolutely unwilling to do that (I suspect some pages are making way too much money for Mahalo to be open to that idea) let the writers take their content elsewhere.

No, this isn’t going to help the writers replace their lost income. But at least the content wouldn’t have been stolen from the writers. Mahalo could easily replace the content with new, residual free content without losing much if any income.

Note: Lest this post appear one sided, I’ve extended an offer to Calacanis to be interviewed as a part of this post. I’m not holding my breath on that one, but if he, or anyone else involved feels like chiming in, I’ll make sure to keep you all up to date.

Update: Calacanis has agreed to be interviewed (see above) and also states that Mahalo was “clear from the start that we might change revenue sharing if it didn’t work.” I would certainly like to see the documentation supporting that claim, and I’ll be sure to address the issue if/when the interview happens. Stay tuned!

image source: anarchosyn

Now that Facebook has turned fans into “likers” (another in a string of idiotic decisions) they’ve opened up their notification emails to all sorts of exploitations for comedy’s sake.

Earlier today a friend of mine suggested that I like his company. Naturally my 12 year old sense of humor kicked in and I wondered via Twitter how long until I started seeing people “suggest you like men” etc.

Never one to disappoint, Kenny Hyder quickly obliged by making that very suggestion. Muhammad Saleem did what he always does and kicked it up a notch. You can see their handiwork in the image above.

So, my fellow friends with adolescent senses of humor, what other entertaining suggestions can you come up with? Feel free to link us to some more images and I’ll update this post with the best (worst) submissions.

Enjoy!

Opponents of framing (or framejacking as I prefer to call it) have had a good couple of weeks.

First Digg announced that Kevin Rose was taking over and his first order of business was to kill off the Diggbar.

This morning, I received an email letting me know that Hootsuite was putting an end to the framing ways of their URL shortener ow.ly!

Those are two huge blows against the despicable practice of framejacking other people’s content with your own crap. There’s just one problem…

In the same email Hootsuite announced that they’re creating a NEW framejacking URL shortener called Ht.ly to replace Ow.ly’s functionality.

So yes, I am happy that Ow.ly will no longer be trying to frame content. Yes, I’m happy that my friends on social sites who for some reason don’t mind that Hootsuite’s pants are burning, can use their favorite service and I will once again be able to click their links, guilt and annoyance free.

But I’m not going to give Hootsuite a big hug for creating another frame jacking toolbar. They know it’s wrong, they’ve promised in the past to stop the practice, and yet they just can’t seem to bring themselves to do the right thing.

And since I seem to get this argument every time I talk about framing, yes this goes for Stumble Upon with their frame, Google Images for their frame, and anyone else that diminishes the value I get in exchange for my content.

Hootsuite users, please use the Ow.ly option as I won’t be clicking on any Ht.ly links. Or better yet, tell the lying framejacking piece of crap Hootsuite to piss off and use a straight URL shortener like Kl.am.

Image sources: Jeff the Trojan & busyPrinting

I am an attention whore.

It’s true. I crave your attention.

Why?

Well sorry to burst your bubble but it’s not because you’re just so great and amazing that I just want you to know that I exist. I’m not some desperate wall flower hoping the pretty girl glances his way. Well, at least not any more. She finally did notice me and God only knows how but I talked her into marrying me but that’s an entirely different story.

I want your attention because if you’re paying attention, I can tell you what I want you to do and you might actually do it!

When I was a kid my mom would have to remind me to do my chores from time to time (always). She’d almost always remind me while I was doing something much more important like playing a video game or chatting on the computer or who knows what. I’d say ok, and sometimes even repeat the request back to her when she dared suggest I wasn’t paying attention.

Naturally several hours later I’d be getting in trouble for NOT doing whatever chore she asked me to do because I wasn’t paying attention.

So yes, I admit I am constantly doing things to get attention online. Things like:

• using inflammatory headlines – Yes Virginia, You Ignorant Slut, WordPress is the Best CMS Available!
• insulting large groups of people – who cares about the Dutch anyway?
• exaggerating the true impact of any given action or decision – why not just unplug the internet while you’re at it!
• attacking well known personalities that I disagree with – Matt Mullenweg, Matt Cutts or pretty much any other well known Matt
• using evocative images – (see right)
• creating an “us” vs “them” battle where one may or may not exist – Communist Russia is going to ban blogging worldwide if we don’t stop them!
• sucking up to well known personalities that I agree with - Brian Clark is pretty much a genius
• fighting for the “little guy” who may or may not care – Google’s new policy is bad for the USERS, not just because it will screw my SEO efforts.
• stretching to tie my point into the popular topic/meme of the day – Justin Bieber loves attention whores
• make outlandish promises – every time this post is retweeted I’ll give an orphan a unicorn

And yes, it’s all for attention.

Because once I have your attention, I can tell you why you should subscribe to my RSS feed (for entertaining content like this of course), buy the Thesis theme (because it’s the best WordPress theme on the market and I make money if you buy it through this link), or retweet this post (because it’s awesome, haven’t you been paying attention?) and you might actually do it!

That is, of course, assuming you’re not one of the people I disagreed with or offended.

So the next time someone accuses you of doing something as link bait, to increase page views, or to simply gain attention, take it as a compliment. It means you’re probably doing something right and you’re in damn fine company (me).

image sources:  zgrredek & aynne

This blog post is going to be a bit different from my normal posts. Mainly because I don’t really have a point.

Instead I have a series of thoughts running around in my head that I’m hoping once in print will meld together to form some sort of coherent thought or maybe even philosophy on blogging and social media as a whole.

And, if any of these random thoughts resonates with you, I’m hoping you’ll join in the conversation with a few thoughts of your own.

I’ve Been Thinking of Starting This Blog…

See it all started when I recently found myself in a situation I’m sure many of you are familiar with:

A friend or family member wanted me to help them start a website that would let them make money off their latest amazing hobby.

Or, they’ve started a blog and want my help making it popular enough to make money from it.

Or, they’ve got a great idea for a site that I should start and they’re absolutely certain it’s going to make a ton of money.

As you may have guessed I’ve encountered a situation similar to the above several times. I usually point them to a couple of my favorite blogs on blogging or if they’re really serious, will recommend a few books they should read.

But more times than I can count, I walk away absolutely knowing their blog will never succeed even if they do managed to string together a few posts on a semi-regular basis.

Why is that?

Why are there people who within minutes of meeting I can tell won’t make a good blogger while there are others that I know would absolutely crush it if they bothered to invest the time?

That question has been stuck in the back of my mind for the last several weeks so I began to take a look at the blog posts that really resonate with me.

Now don’t worry, I’m not claiming to have solved the meaning of online life or stumbled onto some fool-proof recipe for blogging success. Like I said, I’m looking for a discussion.

Making a Connection

Johnny Truant recently wrote a post on Copyblogger.com talking about how he built his online business. To be honest, his process doesn’t sound all that impressive. I mean, look at it:

The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.

Pretty deep huh?

And yet, he’s making 5 figures a month from his online business, while “doing everything wrong“.

Dave Snyder, the most dangerous man on the internet, wrote a post last week that had absolutely nothing to do with SEO or Social Media Marketing (the pillars of the company he co-founded) but resonated with me more than most posts I’ll read in a year. Does Dave talking about story time with his son make me think he’s better at his job?

Not at all.

Does it make me more likely to recommend him or refer people to his company when the time comes?

Absolutely.

Why? Because I can identify with that post. In my mind, Dave & I share more in common than we did before I read the post.

Interact

At this point I’m sure some of you are screaming that these are perfect examples of Third Tribe Marketing. And to some extent, I guess you’re right.

I am a 3T member, but that has more to do with the fact that I’m an unabashed Brian Clark fanboy. I enjoy reading his blog, got a LOT out of his Teaching Sells course, and am in love with Thesis Theme which Brian partnered with Chris Pearson on.

When you combine those positive product experiences with the fact that Brian interacts with me on Twitter, the result is that I’ll buy pretty much anything Brian puts out as long as I can afford it without having to sell a vital organ.

The interaction on Twitter might seem petty to you, but I’d be careful not to dismiss that too quickly.

I recently interviewed several graduates of my Pops’ Dreamweaver Course in hopes of getting some good testimonials to use for his upcoming launch.

The course had a 100% student retention rate even though he offered a 30 day money back guarantee and every student I interviewed couldn’t say enough good things about it. Now, my old man’s a great guy and all, but these people acted like he walked on water!

When I asked them why their reviews were so positive and why they all were recommending the course the answer every single time was that he took the time to interact with them one on one. Whether it was in the support forum or on the weekly Webinar calls, he gave each student his attention, even if only for a short period of time.

Be Yourself

If you’ve ever read advice on blogging I’m willing to bet you’ve been told to “find your voice.” While that’s certainly good advice, hell I’ve written those very words in a post before, I don’t think it actually sinks in to a lot of people.

Instead I think “be yourself” would be better advice. If you’re analytical in nature, be analytical. Dig deep into topics and break them down into statistical nuggets to share with the rest of the online world.

If you’re crass & irreverent, fantastic! Sugarrae has made a name for herself by saying what she thinks and refusing to filter it. At times she’ll say things that would make a sailor blush but a LOT of people respect her for being 100% her all the time, online & off.

One of her partners in crime, Lisa Barone had me following a site about knee socks for crying out loud!

I really have NO interest in knee socks but I enjoy Lisa’s style of writing and knew she was passionate about those damn socks.

Application

So how does this long rambling post apply to you? I don’t have a clue.

For me it means that I think I’m finally realizing that I can relax on my blogs the way I do on Twitter and in real life. I’ve always prided myself on being honest with people. What you see is pretty much what you get.

If you ask me what I think, I’m gonna tell you. You might not like what I have to say but at least you never have to wonder if I’m being honest with you.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t staying up nights wringing my hands worrying about what kind of image I was portraying online. But I spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out what I want this site in particular to be and what kind of face I’d like to show to the public.

I mean, future clients or employers could be viewing this blog right? But I think life’s too short and it takes too much effort to try and “polish” your public image.

I’m a devoted husband, a Christian, a sports fan, a political junkie, an SEO, a blogger, a WordPress guru in training, a Thesis Theme designer, and no, all those classifications don’t always play nicely together.

But if you want to hire me to market your website, or design a Thesis Skin for you, that’s fantastic.

If not, at least you won’t waste your time having to sift through all the typical interview/token answers/telling you what you want to hear BS.

Now I’m not trying to dismiss business or act like I don’t care about making money online. I absolutely do.

I guess I just have the confidence that enough people won’t care whether I offend them once or twice (it’s bound to happen) as long as I deliver the goods.

What do you think?

So what do you think? Have I lost my mind? Should I care whether or not people know what political beliefs I hold?

Do you have to play nice to succeed online?

image source: rmlowe

SEOmoz caused a stir this week by publishing a “study” that allegedly showed NoFollow tags were still effective in sculpting the flow of PageRank.

This of course flies in the face of what Matt Cutts has said on the issue, and the data in the study doesn’t seem to actually be all that solid. But hey, why let that get in the way of a good link bait post, right?

Now, those of you who know me or have been around the SEO industry for a while probably know that I have a history of disagreeing with Rand and the SEOmoz crew. But contrary to what I’m sure some commentors will say, I don’t hate Rand & I don’t go out of my way looking for reasons to criticize SEOmoz. In fact, I’ve spoken with Rand several times and those interactions have been nothing but friendly.

Then again, I like Matt Cutts too, but that doesn’t mean I have to stop thinking Google is a monolithic monopoly that must be stopped before they turn us all into the Borg.

I digress.

While reading through the long string of comments on the aforementioned SEOmoz post, I noticed the tell-tale pattern of behavior emerging. SEOmoz creates controversy, they clarify and apologize, all the while enjoying the traffic and links that come from a good piece of linkbait.

This pattern has been discussed before by myself and several others in the SEO community, but until today, I never realized it was actually a part of a written plan! I mean you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled across SEOmoz’s official decision making flowchart for their blog. (Note: No of course this isn’t ACTUALLY an official SEOmoz document. It’s called satire you twits!)

Naturally this is too monumental of a discovery for me to keep to myself so I’ve attached the flow chart below. Enjoy!

Oh, and by the way, I fully plan on following this flow chart should I begin to receive criticism for this post

As a fellow link-whore, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say feel free to republish the chart as long as you provide a link back to the source. Cheers!

I’m heading to Las Vegas this week for the internet marketing conference known as Pubcon.

This will be my second year attending and I can’t wait. Not only is there a TON of quality information to take in, thousands of people to meet & greet, and more free drinks than my liver knows what to do with… there’s also Poker.

Now, you’re probably saying “uh yeah, it’s Vegas of COURSE there’s poker.” And, naturally you’d be right.

But I’m specifically talking about the Purpose Inc (warning: slightly NSFW) Poker Tournament. Basically, all the IM’ers that know how to play the game end up playing in this tournament. It’s a high quality game (lots of marketers play poker, not sure why but it’s true), a TON of fun and is all for a good cause.

Last year’s tournament was for charity, and while this year’s isn’t officially supporting a charity, writing a post in support of a charity is part of the registration requirements.

For all the vicious names IM’ers are called (spammers, internet polluters, scum, etc) as a whole it really is a great industry. We never miss a chance to give back (for proof, just check out my SEO for Charity post that took of like wild-fire a while back).

The charity I chose to support is the East St. Louis Dream Center. Modeled after the LA Dream Center, the ESL DC supports people in the John DeShields housing project in East St. Louis IL. If you’re not familiar with ESL, it’s best known for it’s strip clubs and it’s crime. John DeShields is one of the rougher projects in the city but it’s near and dear to my heart.

I spent just about every Saturday afternoon for over 6 years in ESL visiting families, playing with kids, picking up trash, and delivering furniture. There are several families that I would consider as a part of my own family and watching the violence and poverty that surrounds them truly breaks my heart.

When a good friend of mine decided to invest even further into the area by moving in, I knew I had to support her organization in any way I could. It’s not often you see a skinny white girl walking confidently into John DeShields, not to mention moving there, but she has a heart of a tiger and loves that city.

So, it’s the least I can do to support the East St. Louis Dream Center, not only through this post, but also with 10% of whatever I win on my trip to Vegas. I really can’t think of a better cause to support and I’ll update you at the end of the week letting you know how it all goes.

If you’d like to support the ESL DC, you can do so via PayPal and remember, it’s tax deductible!

Update: It appears TechCrunch has pulled the offending image and replaced it with another one. They still don’t provide any attribution so I sure hope they didn’t just replace one stolen image with another.

Just for those of you who happened to missed seeing the stolen image being used on the site, I’ve included a screen capture below:

TechCrunch using the stolen image (which they've since removed)

While the popular blog TechCrunch is known across the web as a leading source for tech related information, they’re also cultivating a reputation for using copyrighted images without attribution or permission.

Unfortunately for the popular blog, they’ve been caught red-handed yet again, ignoring copyrights.

Image used by permission of

In one of TechCrunch’s recent posts I noticed an interesting image of a record collection obviously painstakingly arranged. Knowing TC’s proclivity to steal other people’s images, and noticing their complete lack of attribution for the image, I decided to do some digging.

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to figure out where the image had come from. After viewing the image source, I did a quick Google image search for montone records and sure enough, the first result was the very same image TechCrunch used in their post.

Just to make sure I wasn’t falsely accusing TC, I dropped the blogger/photographer, Christian Montone a quick email asking whether he held the copyrights to the image and if he’d granted TC permission to use the image.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, not only had Christian never heard of TechCrunch but he CERTAINLY hadn’t granted them permission to use his image.

Christian responded with the following comment on the offending post:

Hi Milo,

My name is Christian Montone and I am the photographer of the image you used above WIHTOUT permission. I understand that life in the blogosphere comes with the caveat that folks can copy-paste-edit-repost your images at any given moment and I am glad to have any and all folks enjoy the images I shoot, paint or draw. It is, however, a bit disconcerting that I was NOT asked permission for inclusion of my image (nor was I even given a photo credit). IT IS COMPLETELY EXPLICIT AND CLEAR on my blog that I am the author of the images I post (and in fact that image was shot in my home). In the future, when using the personal images made public by myself or others, could you PLEASE employ the common professional courtesy of asking permission of the author of such an image?

Respectfully, yet a bit perturbed…

–Christian Montone

While the comment has been published, TechCrunch has issued no response to Mr. Montone’s comment or his similarly messaged email.

Much like the episode with Digg, a mistake like this would be forgivable and maybe even understandable if it were the first time. People are human, we all make mistakes. However, this is yet another influential website, willfully and arrogantly abusing the rest of the web with complete disregard for our rights.

I would certainly hope TechCrunch’s advertisers and sponsors don’t condone this type of behavior. However, by their continued support of a website so well known for their disregard for copyrights, it would be easy to assume that Microsoft and Media Temple among others are complicent if not supportive of this kind of behavior.

It’s time the rights of bloggers, photographers, and any other content producer is honored online.

Image source: Christian Montone

Update 2: Twitter says they’ve learned a lot and responded with another blog post saying:

The problem with the setting was that it didn’t scale and even if we rebuilt it, the feature was blunt. It was confusing and caused a sense of inconsistency. We felt we could do much better.

I still don’t understand where they’re getting that the feature was confusing or caused a sense of inconsistency from. If you used it, you saw every tweet from the people you follow. That seems pretty simple to me.

The post continues:

So here’s what we’re planning to do. First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon.

So wait, only @replies that aren’t generated by clicking the reply button will be shown? Meaning users now have to choose whether they want all of their followers to see a reply, or whether they want to link the reply to the tweet they’re actually replying to?

And that’s supposed to be making things LESS confusing? Riiiight.

@Biz concludes by saying

Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we’re already working on it. Thanks for all the great feedback and thanks for helping us discover what’s important!

And wait a minute, did you just call this an important issue? I thought the feature wasn’t used by anyone and too confusing.

Putting that issue aside, this actually does sound like an improvement. What makes Twitter great is the ability of users to turn it into whatever they want it to be.

Of course, given Twitter’s history of down time, problems with scaling, and their recent pathetic attempt at a cover-up, I’m not going to be holding my breath on these new features.

@Biz says that Twitter learned a lot from this flap.

Judging from their continuing unwillingness to simply admit they lied about the reason initially and are simply unable to continue to support the feature, I’m not sure they learned anything at all.

====================

Update: Due to the uproar over the “small settings update” Twitter has published a new blog post saying:

The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever.

In other words, “Remember how we told you we killed the option because it was ‘undesirable and confusing’? Well really we had to kill it off because we don’t have enough resources to run our service.”

Bottom line: Twitter lied. (& I’ll now be using the #TwitterLied hashtag)

Rather than admitting that despite taking on millions in venture capital, they still don’t have the resources needed to continue running their service properly.

As experienced as the Twitter founders are in social media, I’m a bit surprised they’d try and then admit to a cover-up of this magnitude. As always, their failure is now an even bigger story than it would have been if they’d have been open and honest with their users from the start.

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As many Twitter users will notice this morning, #fixreplies, #TwitterFail, & Goodbye People I are all trending topics.

For those of you wondering what this is all about, I’d point you over to Twitter’s blog post announcing the “small settings update” but in reality that wouldn’t help much.

Why? Because Twitter apparently doesn’t explain things very well.

Maybe it’s because they’re used to only using 140 characters, but whatever the reason, the result has been a mass of confusion in the Twitterverse.

Your Reply Tab Hasn’t Changed

Despite the many panicked tweets you may have seen on the subject,  you’re STILL able to see every message that mentions your Twitter name.

Whether you follow that person or not, if they @reply or drop your Twitter handle in a tweet, it will show up in your @replies tab.

What Twitter Broke

What Twitter actually changed, was a setting that they say many users didn’t use or understand in the first place. If you follow me on Twitter, and I @reply to someone that you don’t follow, you will no longer see my tweet.

Judging from my debate with @DanZarella (who by the way is a good guy to follow for Social Media info) this morning, it seems that some people may not understand why you would even WANT to see a one sided conversation.

Who Cares?

Personally, I find it’s the best way to discover new users that I would like to follow. If I see several people in my Twitter stream responding to a person I don’t know, chances are I’ve just found someone else useful to follow.

Also, there are a lot of questions being asked and answered on Twitter. And just like in grade school, even if I wasn’t the one asking the question, the response might be quite useful to me.

By eliminating the option, Twitter has essentially forced you to only be exposed to people you’re already following. Rather than frequently being introduced to new people to follow, Twitter has moved us into our own exclusive cliques.

Why Remove the Option?

The only reasoning for this change that Twitter gave was that:

” receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.”

You know what was cool about options? They’re optional. As in if you don’t like the feature you can turn it off. If you do like it, great, use it!

So, rather than allowing users to determine whether the option was “undesireable” on their own, they’ve made the decision for you.

Rather than doing a better job of explaining the supposedly “confusing option” they just disabled it, pissing off the users who liked the option.

Heaven forbid Twitter would actually educate their users on the option, possibly allowing them to get even more value out of their service.

New Features!

But don’t worry! Twitter will

“be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.”

Now, I’m no expert but if you have to create a new feature to replace the one you just killed off, maybe the old one had some value after all.

But just to get ahead of the curve, I’d like to put in a request to Twitter for a new feature. I’d really like to be able to follow ALL of the tweets of people I follow, not just the ones directed at people I already follow.

In other words, give us back the option you just took away.