David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Tag: twitter

  • Twittiquette

    If you missed my piece (opinion piece, I mean. Not a firearm.) in mX last week, here it is in fabulous scanned electro-newsprint:

    And if that’s not working for ya, here’s the text version:

    For What It’s Worth
    David M. Green on Twitter Etiquette

    I followed Phil Collins on Twitter. You’d think of all people, the guy who sang “Follow You Follow Me” would follow back. He didn’t.

    But he’s a big star – even if he hasn’t had a hit in 15 years. He can’t possibly follow back all his Twitter fans. So what’s your excuse for not following back? Are YOU famous?

    I don’t think so.

    So what is proper Twitter etiquette, or “Twittiquette”?

    The ultimate insult in 2013 is to ignore someone online. It’s one thing to simply ignore someone you don’t know or with whom you have no common interests. We do this to millions of people by default.

    But unless you’re a celebrity, you’re in a genuine category of jerk if someone you’ve met in your travels follows you on Twitter, and you don’t follow back.

    It’s the technological equivalent of sticking out your hand for a high five, only to be left hanging. You’d have to truly despise someone – and want them to know it – to do that. You never leave a guy hanging.

    A Twitter following is seen by many as a symbol of power. More followers means more influence. And more chance someone will want to give you a briefcase full of money for no reason. The history of the Internet is filled with stories like that, right?

    But it’s not enough simply to have a pile of followers. The assumption seems to be: “I’ll only be seen as powerful and interesting if I have lots of followers AND I’m not following many people”. In other words, you need an impressive “power ratio”.

    There are many ways to get that power ratio. You can do what a few politicians have done and just buy some Twitter followers, which is great if you like robots. You can do a Miley Cyrus and twerk your way to a pile of followers with a controversial public stunt. You could even try actually working hard in the real world for a number of years to establish yourself as an influential figure in your chosen field… Na.

    The fastest and cheapest way to get Twitter followers is to follow a bunch of people, then unfollow the ones who didn’t follow back. And then unfollow the ones who DID follow back. Presto! Power ratio.

    Although, there is a slight problem with that. If you’re actively ignoring people who follow you because you think it’ll enhance your power ratio, you’re ultimately just making enemies. I don’t know about you, but I feel less inclined to like someone if I know they’re not interested in me. Screw the power games.

    The amazing thing is; being nice on Twitter is so easy. It’s the easiest way to be nice in the history of social interaction. Take the high road. Keep your followers. Keep following back. That’s all you’ve got to do. Even if you hate their guts.

    Of course, if you’re followed by a business that treats Twitter like a spam-delivery system, you’re under no obligation to follow back. And life is too short for trolls, bots and troll-bots (they’re the worst).

    But if you want to be the nicest person in the online world, follow back, like a status and give a retweet now and then. People will love you for life. Or at least until you stop following them.

    —

    And a big welcome to my 5 new Twitter followers!

    I may have acquired more had mX been able to print underscores properly.

    Na, they’re okay.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    @David_M_Green

  • Burger Heaven – The spam is better at Hungry Jack’s

    On Friday 22 February, popular fast food restaurant Hungry Jack’s (The Australian incarnation of Burger King, for my international friends) posted a Facebook status:

    “Today the legendary Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin would have turned 51. Rest peacefully in burger heaven mate.”

    What exactly has the late animal lover got to with cheeseburgers? What is this “burger heaven”? Why doesn’t it have capital letters? Would Steve Irwin even go to burger heaven? Who’s to say he wouldn’t end up in burger hell? And are the burgers in burger hell still flame-grilled?

    Perhaps he wouldn’t be admitted into burger heaven OR hell – Condemned to an eternity in “Burgertory”. Ahh, Burgertory: where the burgers are plain and the service is “okay”.

    This is social media marketing: Using current events (or anniversaries of current events) to tie back into your brand, no matter how tenuous the link.

    Everyone hates ads. Especially on the Internet. When I’m watching a YouTube video with an ad at the start, my mouse-clicking finger hangs over the “skip” button, waiting impatiently as it counts down from 5 to 0 – which actually takes 7 seconds, if you’ve ever bothered to count it.

    Advertising has really invaded social media in the last couple of years. Facebook and Twitter are now awash with spam. And most of it is just lazy. Status updates from major brands can be as vanilla as: “Happy Friday!”

    And I know. Because I wrote them.

    For a short time, I was one of the faceless men who came up with these updates for companies. Last year I spent seven weeks at a digital advertising agency, writing Facebook and Twitter posts for their big name clients who wanted to sell hairspray and sunscreen and avocado dip.

    The problem with social media advertising is most advertisers have absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to do. All of these companies demanded their Tweets and Facebook statuses a month in advance. How are you supposed to make a Tweet topical and interesting if you have to get it approved by middle management 30 days in advance? The best you can do is look at an upcoming anniversary and schedule something about burger heaven.

    Hence, most companies just end up posting generic spam about their products – a sentence that will offend no one and bore everyone – effectively junk mail delivered directly to your news feed.

    Remember junk mail? It’s really amazing that businesses still persist with print advertising. This is how I deal with it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93H10n_JdA&feature=youtu.be

    But how do you make advertising work on social media? I don’t know. But I can tell you what people don’t like. People don’t like someone trying to sell them something they don’t want. People don’t like being bothered. People don’t like being asked by a brand of head lice shampoo what they got up to on the weekend.

    Businesses are desperate to engage you on social media. There’s an abundance of discounts on offer. Lots of restaurants are now offering free drinks or 20 per cent off your bill, just for using Facebook to “check in” to the restaurant. And even better, most of these restaurants don’t even check to see you’ve done it. So you can get the discounts anyway!

    And believe it or not, businesses may still be vying for your online engagement long after you yourself have gone to burger heaven.

    A company called LivesOn is due to launch in March. Using complex algorithms and artificial intelligence, they plan to mimic individuals’ Twitter activity to allow you to continue to socialise online after you’ve logged off the server of life.

    If your online robot is still posting statuses for you after you’re dead, you can guarantee there’ll be banks and supermarkets and airlines all too eager to keep you up to date on their latest deals.

    We may need to develop Blade Runner-esque testing to determine which Twitter accounts are real people and which ones are robots. Who knows, maybe it will be the companies themselves who use LivesOn to continue advertising their products long after the business has died?

    Robots selling robots to other robots – this is the future. Do androids Tweet about their dreams of electric sheep? More importantly, do they go to burger heaven?

    Burger heaven… wait…

    Wouldn’t burger heaven just be full of burgers?

    When we say the dog has gone to “Doggy Heaven”, presumably this is a heaven for dogs, right? Not a heaven for the people who eat dogs?

    So according to the good people at Hungry Jack’s, the late animal activist Steve Irwin now resides alone, surrounded by either whole or partially eaten, possibly sentient cheeseburgers.

    That is absolutely horrifying.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Happy Wednesday!

  • Who’s this twit?

    Well what d’ya know? I did it again!

    Slightly less witty than my debut Q&A re-tweet on March 7:

    But a thrill all the same!

    Last night’s episode of ABC TV’s “Q&A” was broadcast live from Albury-Wodonga (obviously they weren’t in both towns. I forget which one they were in. But it was certainly one of them).

    The main theme of the evening was rural Australia. Not having much to contribute to that discussion, it was more a coincidence that my love of high speed rail would also be beneficial to “rural folk”.

    There’s also the possibility someone at the ABC “Twitter Desk” has their own high speed rail agenda, with fellow RMIT journalism student Emma Buckley Lennox having her fast locomotion-themed tweet broadcast as well:

    I am jealous her tweet appeared beneath Tony Windsor. I do love that man.

    I didn’t get much response after my tweet this time. I’m guessing that’s because Osama Bin Laden was providing a distraction from regular current affairs viewers, and probably also because the theme of last night’s Q&A was “rural Australia”, which, let’s face it, probably doesn’t rate high on the typical Australian’s care meter.

    No doubt these two factors contributed to below average TV ratings. I also noticed the “#qanda” hash-tag wasn’t “trending” last night either. Case closed!

    Until next time.

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    Resident twit.

  • The Twitter Holy Grail: Retweeted by Q&A!

    I couldn’t believe it.

    Last night was the first time I’d twittered along to ABC TV’s political discussion programme “Q&A” and my second ever use of the #qanda hash-tag was put on TV!

    They were talking about the Tea Party movement in the United States, and whether that sort of movement would ever happen in Australia.

    My first tweet was: “I think someone needs a tea bag”. But then I thought of a better pun I had a feeling would be right up the ABC’s alley…

    I’m not entirely sure how they decide which tweets to put on TV. I figure there’s probably one guy who scans the twitter feed and somehow transfers the relevant/funny ones. I’ve heard the show gets tens of thousands of tweets during the hour, so I was quite surprised and very honoured to have achieved the Twitter “Holy Grail” of every comedian and journalist alike, especially on what was essentially my first attempt.

    Within seconds I had about 10 replies on Facebook and Twitter, including one from The Sydney Morning Herald’s Glenda Kwek:

    curious_scribe yes, @david_m_green, a #greenteaparty sounds good. Healthy bowels for all! #qanda

    And I liked this one too from my Internet friend in Townsville:

    Pantomime_Horse Perhaps they’ll hire Hugh Jackman to do the advertisements for a Green Tea Party. #qanda RT @David_M_Green How about a Green Tea Party?

    Several of my friends in Melbourne and Adelaide inform me they gasped in amazement when they saw my name on TV, as did my cousin Laura in Canberra, who apparently nearly fell of her chair. Even one of my RMIT journalism lecturers, Alex Wake, who was watching from the Solomon Islands, allegedly “laughed and laughed”.

    Hehehehe… *sigh*… Can I have a job now?

    Kind regards,
    David M. Green
    As seen beneath Gail Kelly