Comments on: Lest You Forget, It Is All About Me

By: chrisshipley

chrisshipley — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:58:53 +0000

J -

Whether it has something to say or not, DEMO makes it pretty easy for anyone to easily unsubscribe to the demoevents emails. Sorry that they bother you.

Chris

By: J Blake

J Blake — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:40:30 +0000

Chris — I find it ironic that you talk of “unchecked self-importance, reinforced by those who mistake having an audience for having something to say” when your organisation demoevents spams me at work. If there wasn’t a better definition of a self-important person thinking they have an audience, and I can assure you that you certainly having nothing important to say.

By: Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:59:36 +0000

You know, Chris, I sat on your take on this and sat on it and the NYT piece about the trolls came out this weekend and I realized it’s all about gaining that precious 15 minutes. For those who care about how many people are following them, it’s like seconds ticking off the clock when that audience vanishes.

By: Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire! » The Buzz Bin

Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire! » The Buzz Bin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:01:52 +0000

[...] Twitter is loosing users’ friends and Chris Shipley of The Guidwire offers her amusing perspective on the ordeal. “Then yesterday,” says Chris, “Twitter pukes and the relationship database goes haywire. Followers are mowed down by the hundreds. The hue and cry is deafening. ‘Where, oh where,’ the Twitterati wail, ‘are all my followers?’” Read up to find out what’s been happening with Twitter, and what it means to you. by Mike Nelson | Blogs of Fire | [...]

By: Charlotte Ziems

Charlotte Ziems — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:37:46 +0000

Check out another take on this in a WSJ article about Comcast’s social media efforts (http://tinyurl.com/6n8hf5), in which people whose tweets Comcast answers find it “creepy” and big-brotherish that someone is actually responding to them. Can you imagine the–what is it, arrogance?–of people who not only define themselves by the size of their audience but then get miffed when the audience interacts with them?

Your tweets on the “unfollowing” were refreshing, Chris!

By: Mary Fallon

Mary Fallon — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:38:35 +0000

I have a friend – an 18-year-old young man emancipated from foster care. He struggles to make sense of the world of hurt he lives in, to eat, to find work, and to sleep indoors. When I asked how he survives street living, he surprised me by answering “I listen.”

“I’m followed, therefore I am” is a slippery decline. While these “stay connected” technologies are no doubt useful, when people get beyond their true circle of friends monologue, as you point out, trumps dialog. As businesses adopt Twitter et al to “follow” customers I suspect they too will fall into the ego trap of talking at customers instead of listening to them.

From the sidelines I’m watching Logitech remake itself and I appreciate that they have honed down what’s important for survival as new competitors threaten to one question: Would you buy from us again?

If more companies and bloggers adopted listening as their primary mode of communications, customers would realize they have a hope of influencing the direction products from news to computer mice will take and that will create a better era of products and a “blogosphere” we could be prouder to be members of.