League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on October 6, 2009

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a nut for Internet social media. Earlier this year I wrote about my social media evolution, chronicling how I’d moved along with each new wave of the growth of the social web, from chat rooms to forums to blogging to Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter.

I started my first Twitter account (@trappermark) around a year ago, and was immediately intrigued with how easy it was to find and engage fascinating people from all over and all walks of life. At the risk of romanticizing the good ol’ days (yeesh, I’m talking about just 365 days ago!), it seemed like back then you could build up a fairly large following and still find that the majority of your followers were there to engage, to converse, to share and have fun.

That is most definitely no longer the case.

As most people with an open Twitter account would attest these days, the vast majority of followers end up being robot accounts, spammers, or just people who are only interested in tweeting links to their own stuff. It’s begun to feel like the social is being sucked out of social web.

At times I feel very tempted to give up on Twitter. But then I think about how much I have gotten out of it (at its best) and how much time I’ve put into it. So starting today–and over the next few weeks–I’m going to see if I can take back Twitter.

Here’s what I’m doing:

1. I’m cleaning out my Twitter account by unfollowing anyone who shows evidence that they only followed me to add to their over-inflated follower numbers or to broadcast their spam at me.
2. I’m going to actively seek out “real people” who are still in my account but with whom I’ve never before engaged. I will be placing these “tweeps” in a special column in TweetDeck labeled “The Real Trappermark.” And I commit to make a real effort to engage with as many of these people as possible on a daily basis. I want to reclaim that early thrill of discovering new and different people, and letting them discover me. I want to put the social back in my social media.

If you’re on Twitter, and you’re “real” and want to have conversation, feel free to follow @trappermark. I’m now using a verification service called TruTwit to prevent future spammers from re-cluttering my Twitter stream. If you follow me, TruTwit wil send you a DM (Twitter Direct Message) with a link to verify your account. TruTwit uses Twitter OAuth authorization service, which means that when you log in there, Twitter will teall TruTwit that you are indeed the owner of the Twitter account, but TruTwit has no access to your Twitter login or account info. I’ll get a message that you have verified yourself, and I’ll then gladly follow you back. [EDIT: I've decided to discontinue using TruTwit (see first two comments below) and go back to hand-managing follower requests.]

Related articles by Zemanta

• It’s Time To Hide The Noise (techcrunch.com)