Comments on: I Picked a Fight with Guy Kawasaki

By: Lisa Paul

Lisa Paul — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:58:04 +0000

Excellent post!

A friend of mine who is passionate about Twitter as a social, not a commercial medium, wrote a very thoughtful piece on why she is annoyed by Guy’s Tweetbots. (Citing many of the same issues as you.)

Guy responded with nasty Tweets to the point of calling her a “female dog”.

As a former fan of Guy, I was incensed and wrote this post: http://leftcoastcowboys.com/2008/12/04/the-one-where-i-call-guy-kawasaki-a-cyberbully/

Both of us are now being flamed by some of his more avid followers (which we can’t blame him for), but, disturbingly, he’s continued to make snarky comments about our responses.

Not the Evangelist Guy who used to encourage people to engage with their customers (and we are “customers” of his on Twitter) and bring them, with enthusiasm, into loving the product.

By: fusedlogic

fusedlogic — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:57:25 +0000

Kevin,

Ultimately, you’ve started another interesting crowd-sourcing exchange, that in this case Guy Kawasaki is getting the benefit of right now, if he’s monitoring. Interesting case study tidbit…

By: Heidi

Heidi — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:41:21 +0000

I found the #alltop tweets rather ubiquitous and confusing, as well. I agree with Kevin, I’d love to hear about it from the people I follow, but I’m not interested in automated chatter, be it Magpie or Alltop. There’s enough material to filter through in Twitter as it is, why would I want to subject myself or others to more useless fluff?

By: Ched

Ched — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:22:19 +0000

Great conversation. I agree. I did not sign up to follow robots.

By: Vicki

Vicki — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:08:13 +0000

Say what?!
Steven Fisher said

They’re not spam. What they are is paid advertising through a channel you can turn away from.

Steven – they’re spam. Spam is unsolicited info on a channel I subscribe to, be it email, IM, or Twitter.I want words typed by the person I follow, not ads injected into the stream.

This is spam. At least magpie has the grace to include a #hashtag.

Filtering out alltop as of now. Blech.

By: ZUrlocker

ZUrlocker — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:43:27 +0000

Good posting. Although we can argue whether it’s spam or not, I think its over the line. I originally signed up to promote alltop (because I think Alltop is good) but I have since decided I don’t want these types of messages coming from my account.

I’ll promote stuff in my own words when it makes sense to do so…

–Zack

By: Kevin D. Hendricks

Kevin D. Hendricks — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:54:52 +0000

fusedlogic: That would definitely be taking my statements out of context. If all you do is push other people’s crap, that’s going to be pretty suspect. As in all things, there’s a balance to be had. But no, I see no problem with promoting something if you like it. That’s authentic.

Furthermore, I think there can be a place for appropriate advertising. This isn’t it.

What irks me is people ceding their voice and platform to another company.

By: fusedlogic

fusedlogic — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:42:19 +0000

Kevin,

So your point is that it’s ok for people to “push” ad’s on you all day long on twitter as long as they say it themselves. That’s not considered spamming because it’s not automated and in your opinion “authentic conversation” correct?

Further, it’s not the ads themselves so much as it’s the automation and misalignment of the ad content and audience on twitter streams that you object to? In effect, they’re “dumb” not intelligently targeted ads and that’s what is really urking you, yes???

By: Kevin D. Hendricks

Kevin D. Hendricks — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:02:30 +0000

Fran: Someone raised that point before. I’ve amended my entry to reflect that.

But it doesn’t really change anything.

By: Fran Magbual

Fran Magbual — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:49:50 +0000

Can I point out that some of us signed up for the Twitterfeed well before the offer of the free book came up. I did it to help spread the word about a great site and to help out a twitter friend. Not everyone with the feed is doing it for the free book.