Comments on: Upgrade your bullsh*t detector: learning from “Twitter Unveils New Premium Accounts”

By: justB[coz]

justB[coz] — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:48:34 +0000

Hah. Wanted to post this link yesterday but the interwebs was coughing up a furball … this is interesting:

http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-read

By: justB[coz]

justB[coz] — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:55:04 +0000

I think the “quality over quantity” argument comes into play … especially on Twitter where it seems to have evolved into a race for big follower numbers and all the “prestige” that comes from associated (trivial) gradings and ratings. It seems that some Twits have sacrificed a certain degree of responsibility in order to increase numbers as quickly as possible.

By: pam

pam — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:44:52 +0000

I was diplomatically ignoring it . Nobody is perfect – hence my inclusion of the Table Mountain story…

By: Amod Munga

Amod Munga — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:27:53 +0000

I don’t think we ever left that point.

That said, I did type “jumping off the bride”.
Scroll up and have look.

Maybe you didn’t pick it up.
Neither did I.

And ironically, all that serves to illustrate Pam’s point on reading critically rather well I think.

So it all worked out in the end.

By: pam

pam — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:59:24 +0000

Thanks for the comments, you two. Are we getting to a point where actually being able to read critically starts becoming a competitive advantage? I’d like to think so — with all the focus on doing things FAST, sometimes doing them PROPERLY is more important.

By: Amod Munga

Amod Munga — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:53:20 +0000

Perhaps the ability to rapidly disseminate info is microblogging’s worst enemy. People are too lazy to read past the headline and instead get caught up in the hype. They don’t bother to place what they’ve seen on Twitter in any context – by actually following the link, verifying the source (as Pam said) or even looking for the personal commentary that should accompany the Tweet (as cow_grrrl rightly states). Obviously, because reading with comprehension beyond 140 characters is so last year. End result: “Everyone else is jumping off the bride, so I will too!”

Hell, I’ll bet people got to the end of the last word of the first line and jumped to the line break for this sentence. Yes, you. I’m looking at you.

Anyway…

Speaking of bridges, I’ve got a bridge in San Francisco for sale. If you’re interested, you can DM me on Twitter.

By: justB[coz]

justB[coz] — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:30:54 +0000

“Don’t retweet links you haven’t read. Enough said.”

AMEN!!

Twits who do that willy-nilly have lost my attention and my respect. I will happily click on a re-tweeted link that has some personal commentary along with it to prove that the person has actually READ the article and feels that it’ll add value.

Even a RT with a “is this true?” question is enough – at least is shows the person is not just being a lazy link spammer.