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Disappointed: Twitter Polls Don’t Degrade Nicely In Other Clients

Most people seem to have missed the news, but Twitter added in-tweet polling this month. This is an interesting new feature, and one of the biggest changes to the platform in years, but there’s a problem: When viewing a poll in one of the many not-yet-compatible clients, just the text of the question appears. There is no indication that a poll was attached, leading to some weird, out-of-context possibilities.

As you can see from this embedded tweet, Twitter’s polls are nicely composed when viewed on the web site. You are still limited to 140 characters (including the answers) but everything is neat and tidy. And once a logged-in user answers the poll, they can see the results immediately. After 24 hours, the poll is disabled and only the answers show.

For the historical record, here's how my Twitter poll looked on the Twitter web site after 15 hours online
For the historical record, here’s how my Twitter poll looked on the Twitter web site after 15 hours online

When services like Twitter add new features, it is best for them to “degrade” nicely for those using older or third-party clients. But this has never been the case for Twitter. When they added group direct messages, their existence was invisible outside new first-party clients. The same is true of longer-than-140 DM’s, and now this pattern has repeated with polls.

Here's how that same poll appears in the popular third-party client, Tweetbot. Note that there is no indication that I intended to tweet anything beyond the question.
Here’s how that same poll appears in the popular third-party client, Tweetbot. Note that there is no indication that I intended to tweet anything beyond the question.

In all three cases, it is disappointing that Twitter chose to hide critical content rather than showing it in an alternative way. And in all three cases a simple solution presents itself: Embed a link to the Twitter web site.

This would be especially-easy for polls, since the answers use up some of your 140 characters. Surely they could reserve enough space to include the link while still preserving the question! For example, my tweet could have read “What do you think of Twitter’s new polling feature? https://twitter.com/SFoskett/status/659865337630822400”.

Alternatively, they could simply replace the tweet with “@SFoskett has posted a Twitter poll: https://twitter.com/SFoskett/status/659865337630822400”, though this would be sub-optimal since the reader would have no idea if they wanted to click through or not. This solution would have been vastly preferable to showing nothing at all for group DM’s, however.

Here's how a Twitter poll looks on an official client (Twitter for Surface RT) that doesn't support polls
Here’s how a Twitter poll looks on an official client (Twitter for Surface RT) that doesn’t support polls. Still no dice.

Note too that we aren’t talking about rogue Twitter clients here. Tweetbot is authorized by Twitter (if grudgingly), and Twitter for Surface RT by Twitter, Inc. is surely a first-party client. It’s not that these clients are “non-supported” by Twitter, they’re simply “non-supporting” of this new feature.

With rumors swirling that Twitter will add longer-than-140 tweets in the near future, I am concerned. Of all the elegant solutions proposed, it seems that this Twitter, Inc. will likely choose one of the least-palatable options for non-supporting clients: Truncate them or simply don’t show them. This would be a terrible mistake.

Please, Twitter, allow your new features to degrade elegantly and usably in the future!

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Live Streaming Video Adds to the Tech Field Day Experience

Tech Field Day is a live, in-person event for the dozen delegates selected for each event, but as that term implies, a far greater number are represented. Indeed, our latest events have drawn a far-larger audience to the live video stream, and these viewers are joining the event via Twitter as well. This hybrid approach is unusual in the IT event world, and part of what makes Tech Field Day so special.

Storage Field Day 8 drew viewers from all over the world
Storage Field Day 8 drew viewers from all over the world, even beyond the English-speaking nations one would expect

Let’s look at the numbers for our recent Storage Field Day 8 event. Overall, 2,629 unique viewers tuned in over the three days of the event, October 21-23, 2015. Some of these are likely the same people using different computers or devices, but it’s safe to say that literally thousands of people were watching!

Our live stream was “on air” for 19 hours over the course of three days, but our viewers collectively spent 1,226 hours watching the event!

Although we have been suggesting that Tech Field Day events draw about 100 live viewers, this event exceeded that number by far. There was no “down hour” with less than 100 viewers, and some drew multiples of that number. It wouldn’t be fair to compare the statistics for each of the 10 companies presenting, but all should be happy with the live viewership of this event.

The Tech Field Day staff recognizes that tech talent and interest comes from all over the world, so we bring delegates from many nations to our events. Overall, about 1/3 of the Tech Field Day delegates come from outside the USA. Our livestream viewership similarly draws an international audience: 29.5% of viewers are outside the USA, with significant live viewership coming from Canada, European nations like Italy, the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as Israel, India, and Australia. Overall, live viewers in 49 countries tuned in for Storage Field Day 8.

Live streaming video is an important component of the Tech Field Day experience, to be sure. But it is only one of the many benefits of participating. Our recorded video viewership keeps climbing, with over 21,000 YouTube views that same week. We also recorded thousands of tweets, and are cataloging blog coverage on Facebook and Reddit. Learn more about Tech Field Day at our web site, and get involved!

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“Everybody’s On the Internet, and Nobody Cares”

I really enjoy Marco Arment‘s blog and the links he posts and comments on. And I recently read his post, “We’re Just Flipping Through Index Cards”, with a reference to a podcast interview John Roderick by Myke Hurley that got me thinking. John is talking about the music industry, and Marco is talking about the app store. But a lot of it rings true for enterprise IT, too.

The old gatekeepers of information are history

PR Before the Internet

Here’s an example, thanks to Marco’s transcript:

[Ten years ago,] you were dependent on this whole cultural architecture of magazine writers, newspaper writers, college radio, commercial radio, public radio… and if your record got into the stream, and the right person liked it and talked about it, then pretty soon you’ve created a storm of interest that started with one or two people who decided that this record was something that really mattered.

Now substitute “tech press” and “tech analysts” for the influencers he’s referring to and you see where I’m going with this. It used to be that corporate PR could focus on a few well-known individuals to get their message out, just like the music industry focused on DJs and music writers.

I was one of those writers near the tail end; my friend Howard Marks was there in the thick of it. He tells tales of magazines so thick with ads they had to pay extra for articles just to meet postal service “minimum content” rules! And Gartner was the strongest force in the enterprise IT space, with end users paying for their recommendations and following them to the letter.

Democracy Wins!

But that’s all gone now. Storage Magazine folded, and only a few publications remain professional, relevant, and useful (hello, Network Computing!) Even conferences have changed, with independent shows being replaced by vendor-controlled events.

Where do end users go for advice and information about new products? And where to corporate PR and marketing folks go to talk about their wares?

John continues:

Well, five years ago, all of a sudden the conventional wisdom started to change. “Oh, no, we don’t have to do any of that anymore! You just put it on the internet, everybody listens to it, and ‘the crowd’ decides! And you don’t have to do any of that bullshit anymore. You can just tweet about your record, and everybody’s going to listen to it and love it!”

And for a brief moment, when the internet was still comprised mostly of all the right people, it was just the cool kids that were on there. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah could put out a record on Myspace, and the cool kids would all get it.

That was the enterprise IT world about 5 years ago when we started Tech Field Day. A few of us had made the jump to the Internet, and some great new folks started to appear. And what we said mattered just because someone was there, and they were saying something.

Another great thing happened thanks to the Internet (especially blogging and Twitter): Techies became influencers. The old guard ignored the Internet at first. Then they tried to firewall their content and make people pay. Then their empires collapsed. Content was king and democracy won, for a while at least.

What Now?

But in the last few years, things have been changing. Everyone is on Twitter and “social media professionals” have been gaming the system long enough that link fatigue is setting in. Here’s John again:

But, of course, that window was short-lived. Now, we’re back to a world where everybody’s on the internet, and nobody cares. Nobody’s following your tweet link to your record anymore! Except your fans, people who already like you.

My Twitter feed is now 85% links to people’s Kickstarters and YouTube videos. And I only follow people I know! Imagine following your favorite bands — it would be never-ending. Everybody’s trying to promote themselves the same way.

The problem is now, if you hire a publicist, what are they doing? They’re just tweeting about it, too, because the magazines are gone, the record stores are gone… it’s anybody’s guess how to promote a record now. …

I’m sure this sounds familiar to enterprise IT PR and marketing folks. They fill their corporate Twitter accounts with links but get few tweets. They try to build up their Facebook pages because that’s what the pros say to do, but have precious little actual engagement. And they’re inundated with potential social media outlets, from tweeters to online publications to events. But there’s just too much chaff and not enough wheat!

It’s Not the End of the World

In that podcast, John bemoans the decline he sees in the quality of music today, seemingly blaming it on this noisy social media world. I don’t agree.

I only heard John’s views because Marco blogged it. He presumably only heard it because he listens to CMD+Space and respects Myke. And I only listen to Marco because he has a history of posting quality content. See where this is going?

Social media is increasingly filled with noise like the Kickstarter and YouTube links John bemoans. But this just makes it more important to build a reputation and real relationships. “Followers” and “likes” are irrelevant if they’re hollow, and these are proliferating. But nothing can take the place of real credibility. People like Marco, Myke, and John are more important than ever, and they do make a real impact on opinions.

What We’re Doing

The same is true for PR in enterprise IT. You can’t just hire self-proclaimed social media experts and build followers. You can’t trust generic social media metrics without context. You have to build real relationships and have credible conversations with people that are respected in your space. These are the new writers and analysts.

One of the hardest parts of planning Tech Field Day is saying “no” to people we like. We know dozens of great folks in wireless, storage, networking, and the rest, but only a few can go to each event. It’s heartbreaking to tell folks they can’t come this time, but this is what we have to do. Tech Field Day wouldn’t work with 30 people in the room (we’ve tried!) so we have to pick just a few key folks. And our presenters love knowing that they’re reaching top people in their specific area of focus, chosen by their peers.

What makes Gestalt IT, Foskett Services, and Tech Field Day different is us. We’re not some generic social media company. We’re the audience as well as the speaker. We’re enterprise IT people and we would not do this if we didn’t love it. We believe we’re doing the “good work” John is looking for in the music industry: Setting up real conversations and building real connections in an open and democratic way.

Tech Field Day lets companies talk with influencers selected by their peers rather than arbitrary social media metrics

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Twitter Zen: The Four Conversational Paradigms

Twitter can be confusing for the uninitiated, and the fact that there are effectively four different ways of viewing it certainly contributes. Although the main Twitter stream seems like a unified set of short messages, the client applications used by end users present it in very different ways.

The stream of tweets is subdivided by privacy controls, and most clients separate out directed “@replies” and searchable “#hashtags”. There are also private direct messages to consider. No wonder new users are confused!

The main, public twitter stream can be viewed by anyone, but nearly everyone only sees a very small portion of it. Users only see the tweets from people they “follow” when they are logged in to the Twitter website or using a third-party client. If you don’t follow enough people, Twitter can seem like a wasteland, with no action at all. Follow too many, however, and it can quickly overwhelm your attention.

Probably the most confusing aspect of the Twitter stream is the situation around “@replies”. There are basically 2 types of tweets:

  1. A Tweet beginning with the “@ sign” will only be visible in the main stream for people following the sender and recipient. This is important, because many people wonder why their message to @someone does not get any attention. The reason is likely that many people are not following that person.
  2. If you want to make sure that a certain tweet is seen by your followers, as well as the intended recipient, put their @TwitterID somewhere other than the beginning. This is the second type of “@message”, one that will call the attention of people mentioned in it but not be hidden from everyone else.

Hashtags can also be confusing, and can quickly overwhelm the content of a tweet. Essentially, any single word beginning with the “#” symbol becomes a clickable, searchable term in most Twitter clients. Many events and topics have an agreed-upon hashtag, and these form special universal streams that many people follow. New users should not worry too much about hashtags, but should consider using them as a way to gain a little bit more visibility.

Direct Messages (DM’s) transform Twitter entirely, making it function more like a private instant message service than a public conversation. I personally use Twitter DM’s far more frequently than Google Talk, Skype, or any other instant message service. And many people have DM’s sent as SMS text messages or e-mails. The best way to contact heavy Twitter users is through a DM, but you can only DM users who follow you.

As you can see, Twitter is not a simple, universal, open conversation. The stream is divided based on who you follow, hashtags, @replies, and DM’s. Depending on how one uses it, Twitter can be an intimate conversation or a global podium.

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Twitter Zen: Joining the Conversation

It can be difficult to start using Twitter, since you must decide who to follow and it will take some time before people follow you back, let alone interact with you. Imagine yourself walking into a room full of interesting people, all having conversations with each other. Do you expect everyone to notice that you have arrived, stop what they’re doing, and greet you warmly? Or do you expect that you will need to find someone interesting and join their conversation?

It takes quite a while to work up to numbers like these...

The first thing you should do is locate a few interesting people to follow. Don’t go with the initial set that Twitter offers. Rather, think of some people (both famous and ordinary) that you would like to have a conversation with. Search for their Twitter people and follow them. Since you’re reading this, you might like to start with me (SFoskett) and some of the Tech Field Day delegates (my tfd-delegates list)!

After you have done this, Twitter will recommend other interesting people in the “who to follow” box. Don’t bother with anyone “Promoted” (that means they paid to be suggested) and focus on the “natural” suggestions. These will be people followed by, or similar to, the people you selected above.

Ignore "Promoted" suggestions, but the others are likely worthwhile

Look through the “Tweets” of these people, and see who they interact with. Follow some of them as well. And check out who the people you respect are following (here’s my list) until you have followed a few dozen people.

Read what they have written, how they interact, then join the conversation. Reply to something they say or chime in with an interesting anecdote, and see what happens.

Many new twitter users wonder why no one pays attention to what they say, but there is a reason for this: Only people who follow you will see your simple tweets, and it is unlikely that many people are following a new user. Twitter users are not actively trying to exclude you, they just are not seeing what you are writing.

Join a conversation by including the “@TwitterID” of some people who will be interested in your tweet so they will see it. They may decide to follow you back, and begin conversing with you. I personally follow back anyone who engages in interesting conversation with me, and I believe many others do as well.

If you’re having trouble engaging with other Twitter users, consider the form and content of your tweets. Are they interesting, with wry observations and witty anecdotes? Are they readable, following convention for format and grammar? Are they directed at people who will care about the topic? And, once again, are you engaging people by including their @TwitterID so they will see what you’re saying?

It’s very easy to get dispirited at first. I actually created a test Twitter account to try these suggestions, and it took weeks before I had any real interaction and followers. I empathize with the plight of the new tweeter, but I heartily recommend that you stick with it. Once you’re part of the Twitter conversation, it’s worth it!

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Twitter Zen: Setting up Your Account

When you create a Twitter account, you will be asked to enter some profile information, including your name, URL, description, and photo. All of these are critically important: Many people will look at them to decide whether they want to follow you. If you have not set these up, other Twitter users likely will ignore you!

Consider carefully how to make your Twitter profile reflect how you want to be seen to potential conversation partners. You can only have one profile picture, one URL, and one name, so what do you want to say about you?

Make sure your ID, name, avatar, and URL are entered, and create a reasonable description of yourself

Your twitter ID should be capitalized appropriately to help people identify you. I use capital S and F to show that SFoskett is my first initial and last name. If your twitter ID consists of multiple words run together, consider capitalizing them in CamelCase to highlight each word.

If you wish to be identified as a real person, enter your complete name in your profile. Know that most Twitter clients will highlight the name rather than the twitter ID, so this is what people will see as they read your tweets. I use my full proper name, but others sometimes enter a humorous description of themselves. But this should not change too often to avoid alienating your followers.

I picked this Polaroid photo by Jennifer Huber because it is distinctive, recognizable as me, and includes a relevant and amazing piece of computer history in the background!

Your avatar photo is one of the most visible elements of your Twitter account. Many people change their avatar fairly frequently, even though this can be confusing for followers. I like to keep mine consistent, with only occasional tweaks, so that I’m more recognizable. And I recommend that “real people” Twitter accounts use a recognizable photo of their face.

Twitter only lets you enter one URL, so make sure it’s a good one. Recognize, too, that Google and other search engines use this URL to associate a twitter account with a website. Although many people have a large Internet presence, it is important to pick the one site that best represents you. I use my blog URL, since I can control that content and include links there to my other sites.

Pay some attention to creating an interesting and informative description of yourself for your profile. Don’t stress too much over this, since it’s easy and non-disruptive to change it later. But know that many potential followers will read it, so it should reflect the type of conversation you would like to have on Twitter. If you are sneaky, you can stick another URL in your description, but don’t count on people clicking on it, since most clients don’t allow this.

You may also enter a location in your profile, but these are not widely used, and a static location value may be more confusing than useful. You can tweak the colors and backgrounds of your profile page, but this is much less important since many people use a third-party Twitter client and will not see this page. So don’t stress much about location and colors.