Bowing to Our Twitter Robot Overlords

June 13, 2008 · Comments

I have an anti-robot stance on Twitter. By that, I mean to say that I don’t want to follow things that aren’t people (with all due respect to Bruce Sterling’s spimes). I just don’t need to add something automated into a place that’s inherently human. Or at least that was my stance.

Now, Tom Peters is evidently loosing a robot on Twitter, such that it will blurt out little Tom-isms. Hmm. I passed on the Seth Godin robot (wish to devil it was Seth for real), but the way Shelley Dolley put it has me thinking:

Tom’s not planning to jump on the micro-blogging bandwagon anytime soon (limit Tom to 140 characters? I don’t think so), so for now, this is the only way to get your Tom fix on Twitter.

So, hmmm. If it’s a little spurt of Tom Peters advice, and I like Tom (or Seth or Covey), maybe I should follow the robots?

Not sure. What say you?

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  • I don't follow robots, Internet marketers, or anyone that sounds like an 8 year old writing a text message.

    That might make me a purist, but there need to be a few of us to balance out the everyone-followers.
  • Twitter is one of the best newsgathering sources I have in partnership with my RSS subscriptions. Twitter is more timely, so for me it would just be a matter of how soon I would like to be updated about something. For Seth, I do like to know when he posts through twitter, but for someone else, I could just subscribe to the RSS from their twitter profile and receive those with the rest of my feeds.
  • I don't think just running an RSS feed through twitter is a good way to use it, but I do follow some news organizations and people who do that.

    Partly because I'm interested in how twitter is used in different ways, partly because I'm interested in the content.

    But NASA with @marsphoenix gets it much better than most media (NPR and the PBS Newshour are among the exceptions with both staff and the organization participating in the conversation).
  • I do not mind following established news sources that uses robots to share news such as the New York Times and The Washington Post. HOWEVER, I do not care for robots that do not share information that is not substantive. There was a twitter account selling Lionel Trains and other toys all run by robots. I was not interested and I was so tired of them that I blocked them from being my friend.
  • I follow @br3ndabot, just for the amusement factor.

    I also follow @esvdaily (Bible verses), but now that I follow hundreds of people I never see its tweets.
  • Just like with just about everything else, it all comes down to personal preference. Personally I think bots used in smart and effective ways are great tools, and as long as it's made clear to interested parties that it is indeed a bot that is participating, those parties can either take it or leave it. Personal choice... gotta love it!
  • I too follow the NYTimes via twitter. The health section anyway. I never did subscribe to rss feeds, just via email, so being able to be alerted to new stories in the health section is really to my advantage.

    I guess it's just another way I'm using twitter - a means to an end: Conversation, resources, and, news updates.

    if the robot serves a purpose to the user, so be it.
  • Heather Beach
    I think one of the appeals of Twitter is the ability to receive instant spontaneous thoughts from real people. It is fun, timely, and filled with variety. The fact that the messages are short blurbs about what an individual is thinking at that very second is what creates the feeling of connectedness between people. In my opinion, that is what makes Twitter successful. If I want to read static premeditated quotes from people, I would rather just visit their website and read them there.
  • As long as the robots are smart and lead to connectedness and conversation, then they make sense. For a news organization to tweet, I'm not sure about that, because chances are, I'm already subscribing to their rss feed. Would I want to read the robot alias of someone who I trust and respect? On one hand, yes, but on the other, I also like the fact, that (for example you), when you tweet, you're there, reacting, interacting, generating conversation, thoughts, even possibly helping bring about a behavioral change in others...look at your last 2 blog posts. I signed up for e-mail notification and I'm still getting responses. (That's not a complaint, I love watching the conversation unfold and morph.) To me, if that happened from a robot-generated tweet, it might be a bit ingenuine. That's my 2-cents anyway, fwiw.
  • Okay...one comment, after my little novella up there.
    I might like tidbits of wisdom--Broganisms, if you will, if there were a way to distinguish your twitter-robot-alias from tweets straight from the source. (Same would go for anyone or organization w/a TRA.)
  • I think it's a very silly idea. Short online conversations already lack a great deal of human context, if you start following a robot then you really gave up.
  • It doesn't work for me. I want tiny bits of humanity in my Twitterstream. They don't all have to be like today's comments of the passing of Tim Russert, but human nonetheless.

    However- I really dislike it when people tell me how to use Twitter (my use has evolved dramatically over time and will continue to evolve, and all of it was/is "right")- so if the automated tweets work for some folks, that's great.
  • I wrote my own robot. Tom Peters can keep searching for wow and excellence and whatever. I'll be over here making the robots that power the wow.
  • Well, that's fine, but don't expect me to bow to your preference by going over there to waste my time manually. :)
  • Some people on Twitter I wish were robots. Then maybe following CNN would be worth something. Or maybe an Amanda Chapel random insult generator would be cool (with a high percentage of the words "pabulum", "masses", and "kool-aid").

    On the other hand, as much as I respect Tom, if he can't be bothered with really being on Twitter, then maybe I can't be bothered with following the wowbot.
  • I follow a few bots on Twitter (particularly some of the BBC News ones), and I am also following the "TomBot."

    I see Twitter as wider than a social networking service - one of my own servers has a bot (restricted to people who I authorise to follow it) that sends out a system-generated set of KPIs at 3pm every day to our managers... If that was the ONLY thing I did with Twitter, then I'd regard it as a mobile phone enablement service :-)

    I do have my blog entries auto-posted to Twitter, because it's a timesaver and I spend enough time on the titles that they're probably what I'd Tweet anyway... but I make sure that bot posts are well under 10% of what I tweet - the majority is engaging in others' conversation.
  • Funny, I found following Clinton and Obama to be much like a robot. Incredibly scripted, routine Twitter posts that sounded like they were written by an automated speech writing machine full of the best 1,000 cliches available to modern day politicians.
  • I'm generally not a bot follower either. I follow 1/2 as many as follow me, so I'm not much of a follow everyone kind of guy, but I'll try this out before coming to any conclusions. What's three more tweets a day...

    Besides, I've never read Pride and Prejudice.
  • "Since Twitter can be used on a computer or a cell phone, it's fun to imagine the varied locations and circumstances of the folks who will be reading the tips at the same time."

    It's interesting that Tom sees all of this value in Twitter, and yet at the same time feels limited by the 140 character limit. I don't really understand his position here.

    Bots are OK if they are providing useful information. Especially with Twitter, where you choose your own information stream, why complain about purity? Just stop following the bots.
  • "so for now, this is the only way to get your Tom fix on Twitter."

    Then I won't be getting my 'fix' of Tom on Twitter. I use Twitter as a tool to connect with and talk to others. Not to be marketed to with no way to respond.
  • Funny that tweets coming from an alleged robot @MarsPhoenix are actually very human, expressing the heartfelt wonder, excitement and joy of its creators. This is a major scientific event and NASA is doing an amazing job using social media to communicate. Spent a good twenty minutes today showing their tweets and website to my four year-old who wanted to know "How do people learn to go to outer space?"

    Hooray real robots!
  • Great post! This has been an automated comment response ...
  • Shelley Dolley
    Mack - the intention is not to market to you without letting you respond. Just as we (team Tom) offer a daily quote delivered to your email inbox, the DailyLit Twitter service is merely another way to hear pieces of advice from Tom, free of charge. We're simply trying out new technologies to see if they're of use to Tom's fans. If it were a marketing ploy, we'd plug Tom's books or speeches. That's not what this is about. I'm sorry you had that impression.
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