I thought the idea was great. One of the difficult things about twitter is knowing who to follow. Eventually you figure out that once you follow a couple of interesting people, you can find new folks based on who they follow. But not everyone figures this out quickly enough.

People seem to be fine with the idea of tagging, but have problems with lists. At least the last time I checked, the lists contained a lot of interesting folks that I might not have discovered otherwise.

Lists are great, they give newcomers a jumping off point. Then, as time passes they can add and take away as necessary.

What’s wrong with lists? Personally I welcome our new list overlords. ;o)

I’m not sure why there would be anything negative to say about your Twitter Pack list. I thought it was a great idea!!

I think the idea is great, and I am amazed that the concept was so reviled by some. I just thought to myself “hey, cool I can find others who are into X or are interested in Y”. And then I did.

And this is coming from the guy who had a problem with the Twitter Gates!

Personally, I think the people pulling their names and companies off the list is a bit like a child stamping their feet when they don’t get their way.

I happened to be wading in the Twitter stream when the link came across from Geek Mommy and jummped up on my soap box. Whoa…people went absolutely crazy over the idea of cliques and groups on Twitter, like that is not out there already? What? Threatening to leave Twitter? Hold on just a second here.

It was just a list of suggestions. I didn’t see any Twitter police at the door saying you MUST add these people. (I’ve been using Twitter for a year and I saw some new people that I might want to add when listed out like that.)

I guess I’m a PollyAnna about all of this..much ado about nothing. It was today’s Twitter flavor of the day and in a few days it will be barely a blip on the radar.

What’s a clique? (clique - a small, exclusive group of people) I have about 20 people that I @ on a routine basis, call on the phone and/or meet have met in person. Am I part of a clique, probably so. Is it because of some sort of list or pack..not hardly-it’s my own personal village of friends.

It’s about the people always has been always will be for me.

My concern is more for the outrage at a list of names and links. Yikes…I don’t think that was ever the intent and how did it become more about fear of cliques, than a few pages of links.

I’ve seen far more serious things on the Twitter timeline, deaths, cancer and people who just need a hug now and then. Shaking my head, it’s just Twitter my friends, not life or death or the end of the world. Lighten up…

AnnOhio

I think the behaviour that building this list has created should gives us all something to reflect on. I find peoples behaviour far more interesting than the list itself. I’m not exactly sure why people are getting mad about such a simple thing, but I will watch the outcome of this carefully.

I agree with Tim. I’d hope there are more important things to worry about.

it’s the scene in Team America
the signal that something’s wrong
hands flying all around and durka durka

this is what that scene was made for
for moments like this when you have to wonder
wtf?

I don’t think the idea is a bad one, Chris. You’ve identified a need: It’s very difficult to figure out who is who and what area(s) of interest everyone has on Twitter.

The only criticism I might offer is that I am not sure a wiki is the best choice for implementing this idea. I know it’s easy to set up, open, and fast, but as some have noticed, it’s a little lacking in features and open to gaming.

Long-term, a database might be a better choice. If I were a coder I’d set one up, but as I’m only a marketer, the best I can offer is hosting space for such an effort.

The experience itself is winning out over utility right now. All the buzz, amazing. The socialness of it all, it’s interesting to take in.

I agree with the thoughts shared here that this isn’t such a big deal…if someone likes it, fine. If not, that’s fine, too!

Remember, “You can’t please all the people all the time.” is a cliche for a reason!

I have other things to expend energy on, like…ummmmm…the SOTU? organizing my bookmarks and feeds? cleaning up my data base?

Personally, Chris, I appreciate your taking the time to think something like this out and share it. I’ve skimmed over it, but I don’t have time to really get into it right now…hopefully I will soon! If I like it, I’ll use it…if not, I’ll quietly move on. No need to criticize…we all see apps we like that work for us and apps that don’t.

Echoing Tim, this says far about human behavior than TwitterPacks.

The list idea is a great starting point. What I am really eager to see is some sort of data visualization via geolocation or tags of interest… which would of course be selectable and configurable via a combo box drop down… possibly written using action script w/flex or flare. I don’t have the know-how or the time to create this user map, but I think it would be exponentially more useful than the ordinary list or table output.
Either way good try, and I already have added some users to my list via the wiki lists. thanks

Disclaimers:
I have a very positive experience of Chris Brogan. Life is never dull around him. I would agree that there is a certain amount of stirring the pot.
I’ve only been on Twitter since Xmas 07 and I understand that Twitterati who have been here longer should grasp the significance of Twitter Packs better than I.

I posted on @yndygo’s GeekMommy article earlier today. It was useful to get early perspective from posts by ConnieReece and AnnOhio there. I went ahead and added myself to a few Pack lists (I don’t fit neatly into any one category).

I was rather horrified later today though by a comment from a new follower. I was checking out his profile and found his latest post @ChrisB “Who’s building the single-click feature to add the entire Pack?”

To me choosing individuals one by one is the whole point of building a community that makes sense for me. I always check someone out before I follow them. I look at their Twitter page, I look at their blog. I usually “meet” them by posting on their blog. The thought of following people just because they are on a list, or worse as a group, repels me. But as a clue for people to check out, it may not be bad. I had been wanting a clue to find Twitterbuds for Tweet-Ups in LA. However, usually I discover potentials for following from suggestions from trusted TwitterBuds or from noticing Twitterati my Twitterbuds are corresponding with on topics of interest to me.

This is not a MySpace where I am trying to gather fans for my band.

It seems like everyone responding here doesn’t quite get the dust up, and nor do I.

Twitter is for everyone. You introduced a way for people with similar interests to find each other. If I choose to self-select myself in any of the Identity Packs or search for people to follow, then that is my business. To get bent out of shape about the mere existence of these packs is absurd and exclusionary.

I think this was a lovely idea. It was fun to look at while people collaborated and was looking forward to grabbing a few minutes to update a few things myself (it was great to see the Mac developers community included as they were they people I first followed over a year ago). And it was thoughtful of you to take time out of your day to set this up.

Sorry it went wrong and I think that people must have a ton of time on their hands.

Also - I love the wiki format. It allows people to share and interact. We have something similar for work (we have over 300 people around the globe) and it’s really made us interact more - with smiles! I’ve started adding video to it with great results!

Chris, could it be the *perceived* lack of control of who gets on which list?

What about if you’d tried it this way -

* Post a form inviting recommendations for each pack
* Set up a Digg style voting button for each ‘nominee’
* Once a particular nominee gets a minimum number of votes, put them into the ‘final’ version of a pack
* Leave comments open for feedback about someone on a pack, so folks who disagree with the inclusion can object with reasons
* ONLY AN ADMIN can then edit the list/pack

It’s a structure we are used to in real life.

We go to the ballots and cast our vote. The majority candidate gets to become president. We then disagree with a policy, and vent about it. But WE CANNOT CHANGE THE PRESIDENT - until the next election.

This wiki thing is wild! I can edit ANYONE’s comment - with no rhyme or reason. An anarchist’s dream. And this statement isn’t really true:

“Think about this: ANYONE has the password, ANYONE can edit the list… That’s the opposite of exclusionary.”

A nutty clique or claque can drown a few sane voices just because each has equal power - just like votes from ‘informed’ and ‘groupie’ voters in an election.

One way this whole PACK idea helped was in forcing me to think which group I might fit in - and realizing the answer was, ‘NONE OF THEM’!

Hmm…. time to niche-ify myself ;)

All success
Dr.Mani

“This has become even more interesting, however. People got angry pretty quick, talking about the clique-ish nature of Twitter, of the lists being a clique, of them being exclusionary.

Think about this: ANYONE has the password, ANYONE can edit the list.”

This is the part that I found completely odd, but how can this be clique-ish, if anyone can add anyone?!?

Sorry but this smacks of some people simply wanting to be offended.

Interesting idea and not completely unexpected, but I don’t think it will last long. Twitter is too dynamic to be classified in a static manner. People fall in and out of favor depending upon how often the tweet about totally uninteresting stuff.

Besides I agree packs are for wolves and it actually made me think it was groups of twitter clients, bots and extensions that you installed.

The term used should be should be murders like groupings of crows. Isn’t TwitterMurders.com a much more interesting site? (/me wonders how long till a site parker finds that.)

Well… I guess it’s time for a minority opinion.

I’m not against the concept, per se. As mentioned above, I think the scary part is having it in a wiki that anyone and everyone can edit. Particularly when it would be very easy to start pranking, and adding others to certain lifestyle groups that may arise.

John Johansen had an excellent suggestion, that this sort of thing be better handled through special tags on the Twitter profiles. That way, we could self-select by keywords and locations in a way that improves on Twitter’s native “Search for Users” function.

I have a different concern, based on my theory that Twitter use changes depending upon the size of your Following list. What’s optimal for small groups is impossible for large and medium. I know I used it differently when I was tracking fewer than 50, and in some ways I miss that. To immediately jump-start others into hundreds of folks may end up driving people away from the tool because it doesn’t open them to the possibility that it can be any other way.

I’ve got more on this posting at Now Is Gone in a couple of hours…

Ike.

I chalk this up to “you can’t please all the people all the time.” If you don’t like Twitter, Twitter Packs or lists then don’t use them. Of course, *everyone* uses lists. I’m willing to bet most people who are complaining have “a list” of people and companies they like and follow.

The very fact that anyone can add or remove names from the list makes this approach one of the most “fair” in my opinion. Some disagree. I’m okay with that.

Now, let me address the Identity Pack page since I started it. I made some high level observations of identity groups that tend to have a hard time finding each other on apps like Twitter and added them. Others began adding to it. So I can’t be the only one who thought this was a good idea.

I understand how some were surprised to see categories for race, religion and sexual orientation. But really, most of the people on the page list that particular aspect of their identity on their public Twitter profile.

While it’s rare I’ll follow someone *solely* because of their identity, it nice to know I’m not the only black gay in web design, or gay guy in social media, or Buddhist guy in podcasting, or… You get my point.

I understand that some people *claim* not to care about identity. But when you are not a visible part of the majority, you know that isn’t entirely true.

My intention is not to make anyone feel uncomfortable about any aspect of their identity. The goal is to provide a place for people who use Twitter to find others who share a part of their identity. After all, we are more than what we do for a paycheck. It’s called “social” media for a reason.

That said, I’m perfectly fine if the page is removed. I can always start another somewhere else.

[…] Twitter Packs Goes off the Rails Quick […]

[…] told folks about it.  One can instantly imagine that folks took sides.  See his follow up post here.For me, it was instant fun!  Talk about a neat idea.  Of course, the first thing one must do when […]

Well, I did reply to you over there - and I don’t know that copying and pasting serves any purpose.

Have you ever found yourself saying somewhere “Damn, I hate this… and here’s why…” and then suddenly found yourself in the middle of a bunch of people saying “Yeah! Me too!” and an equal number of people shouting “What? That’s outrageous!!” at the same time?

Yeah, that would be this event with me.

I’m fairly certain I was clear in what I wrote - but I find that often, when I’m being long-winded, people cling to one or two salient points as being the gist of the entirety and are then confused.

Let me put it more succinctly:

1) I don’t at all question the intent of the wiki - I get why you started it and what the intended benefit was. That it was intended as a beneficial tool to aid new twitters? Check.

2) I had no idea that this was a project you started (honestly, it’s not like it indicates that somewhere on the page) so there was nothing personal about my assessment

3) I utterly misinterpreted the word “pack” in the context. As Twitter is social media, I’m sure it’s not that far of a stretch to see why I got “wolfpack” rather than “starter pack” - people are closer to animals than magic cards any day.
But if I did, then there’s a likelihood that I’m not the only one. This could easily be remedied by a brief blurb on the page saying something to the effect of ‘Twitter Packs - sort of like a starter pack of cards to begin learning your favorite game, until you learn the ropes and start collecting your own.’

4) The intent, I believe was good, the methodology and implementation were what I questioned - and prophesied would lead to disaster. I don’t exactly believe I have any power to create a disaster so much as simply foresaw the potential for it.

5) People are taking their names off and stomping off? This is unknown to me except as reading it here in your comments. Someone added my name to the Colorado pack. I didn’t remove it. I haven’t edited it in any way.

I’m sure there are those who would look at this as a tempest in a teapot - @AnnOhio told me as much, as did others, and I replied with my belief that their advice was sage and I should just sit back and observe.

There are others who like to stir the pot - I was surprised to find someone previously a friend on Twitter making it into a personal attack and questioning my sanity, then publicly bragging about doing so.

There are some who might go more to the extreme than I…

Whatever the case - I’m a bit stunned at my own involvement.
My apologies if I wasn’t clear on the fact that I don’t revile it - I just don’t want to be a part of it. Then again, no one is forcing me to, either.

There you have it - again - a Gutenberg Bible edition.

Chris,
I guess that you saved Twitter from getting in trouble introducing groups - that wes a good experiment. This is what that Jack Dorsey their CEO was afraid from. See Jeff Pulver interview with him. http://www.blogtv.com/Shows/96/date/YeTrZmZwZu_

I liked the idea though. It helped me find few new folks to follow.

I guess that some like Twitter to stay a jungle a disorgenize free radio channel. A list is some sort of control.

Keren

I posted about this a bit earlier this afternoon.

Actually, I think that TwitterPacks lowers the barrier to entry on Twitter. Twitter is human-driven. That makes it complex and messy. It actually takes some courage to get going in the Twitterverse and I admire all of the people that have done it.

http://originalcomment.blogspot.com/2008/01/segmenting-twitterverse.html

[…] you know what?  Chris Brogan is a generally good guy.  He was trying to help people to hear that conversation I’ve been […]

Wow. I missed all the action. I was hoping the blogger/journalist debate would be the fun one today. Looks like I should have fed my drive for conflict over in this “drama”? ;)

Chris, I checked out the wiki page. Personally, not for me. But that’s just me.

Yes…everyone can edit and add themselves. But most people just don’t WANT to do that. Most people want to see that OTHERS have done that already. There is something about adding yourself to a list that feels different than seeing your name already where you want it to be. And something horrid about seeing your name on a list you would prefer it wasn’t. It’s about control really.

I think the idea was a good one. Seems not too much of a stretch from other ways we like to box, group, club, clique, or “identify” ourselves daily. We ALL have roles we use to validate ourselves at times. Which also makes it a bad idea as well.

But I’m with those who take the bigger, harder leap to really attempt to navigate profiles and read up on the streams and take the brave step of exploring anyone and anything.

What I MOST enjoy about twitter, is that it’s the social network I use for so many different things, mostly creating a party of followers and those I’m following that makes no sense on any list except that somehow, through me, they are connected.

If that makes sense?

ps. I’d have put you in the “cool guys who take road trips” group personally. ;)

e

Dang, I just got a phone call about this tonight and had no idea this existed.

I hate to say it, but it’s times like these I -get- the top down ‘conversation-control’ aspect to big media. Namely, having to do things like log in to Spock just to MANAGE what is known about me, puts me in a position to have to manage how I-as-a-person am perceived. I bury a lot of terms.

I like things like onXiam, because it enables ME to put forth information about where to find me on the web. I like facebook’s ‘Lists’ and Pownce’s ’sets’ because *I* am making the groupings for people– this idea with packs, however, puts it out in the open for others to do.

I’ll give an example of one place I struggle with this. The most irritating thing you can say to me is ‘So, how’s Second Life?’ as if that is all that I’m defined by. I’m actively trying to thin that perception and almost distance myself away from SL, only because there are other things I’m focusing on LIKE it, that are NOT it. It also impedes my ability to work with many other virtual worlds if I’m perceived to be focused on one piece of software.

If someone doesn’t follow me (blog, twitter or otherwise), they’ll have no idea how broad my own reach is– that I’m more about gaming industry + social media + OTHER worlds– and I’ll be typecast as X.

I’m also considering if I want the ‘blogger’ label as I’ve thought about scaling that to include blog activities and more mainstream activities as well (I’ve kinda already done it under the radar like). That’s a label I’ll never be able to shake.

I’m listed in the virtual worlds pack and yet I’d rather be in the video pack instead of that. I’m not established enough to be in the ‘writer’ pack. That’s not to say I don’t WANT to be in the VW Pack, but yeah, you can see how it gets all weird.

I still think 2008 will be the year of the anti-social media for reasons like this. It’s becoming an unbearable amount of effort. It’s a testament to the flaws in social attention. Good idea perhaps, but certainly a victim of its own construct. Social means people. People don’t mean the same thing across the board.

[…] Is Gone.) As a way of helping others find value more quickly, Chris offered the notion of “Twitter Packs,” a convenient bundling of people that one could quickly add to get a flavor of what Twitter […]

Wow–I missed the whole thing today. Chris, I agree that newcomers need a hand getting started with Twitter. I admire that you come up with all these fabulous ideas and go for it. Some are going to work, and some aren’t. But that is part of the whole social networking web 2.0 beta experience. Thank you so much for doing this. The reactions are interesting, and definitely something to learn from. You never know what is going to trigger emotion and controversy.

Don’t be put out–you are really driving and inspiring so many of us! Thanks for doing this.

Cheers,
Connie

When you launched, you and I chatted a bit in the Twitter timeline and then via DM about specific categories I had issues with — more specifically, those that had nothing to do with location, vocation or interests, but rather value judgments: the visionaries, the friendlies, the sweethearts, the randoms.

Is anyone going to add themselves to those packs, or will they just hope that someone else does… and then get disappointed if their popularity doesn’t make the grade?

Those were the weird spaces in the whole thing for me. For example, I think establishing six people as the “friendly” people on Twitter is just completely bizarre.

There are gazillions of friendly people on Twitter, and finding the ones who fit you is part of the experience.

But we ended up agreeing on all this stuff. I just wanted to leave a long comment. :)

“If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven’t figured it out yet.” - Tom Peters.

I’m not upset or angry, and I’m so very thankful for all the various opinions. If we all agreed, this would SO suck more.

But did we LEARN? I know I did. Were you surprised by things you learned about this? Did you see anything differently? (You don’t have to answer here, but hey… weird, eh?)

I don’t understand all this commotion. I made my own Twitter Pack a long time ago, way before I signed up for a Twitter account. It sat there on my workbench, next to my Mac IIfx, for years. I had no idea what to do with my Twitter Pack and almost threw it away several times. Now, I finally have a chance to use it. Unfortunately, this juncture seems to be yet another pickled herring.

Most people probably know this already, but I figured I’d point it out…

If you want to search for people based on info they put in their profiles, there’s no need to wait for special tags. It’s already possible to search for any word in Twitter profile.

See http://terraminds.com/twitter and make sure you use the [Search in Users] button instead of the default [Search in Updates] button.

[Search in Users] will search through Twitter profiles only and ignore updates.

@mdy - Yes, but if it were a tag that one deliberately identified, it would cut down on some confusion.

Also, I’m not just carping without a solution. I’ve got a couple of ideas that might marry the best of all worlds:

1 - Opt-in interface that doesn’t just scrape passive data.
2 - Self-selected tags that are controlled only by you in your profile.
3 - Easy interface for mass-adding (or removing) new Twitterzens to follow.

It might happen…

OK, I’ve only been a part of Twitter for a week now, so I guess I’m in the demographic that Chris set TwitterPacks up to help. And you know what, I did find it helpful. Extremely! Want to know how I used it? I looked at each pack in turn, clicked on the names, scanned down their tweets and made a decision about whether or not I wanted to follow them. After deciding who I was going to follow from the pack, I then checked out who they followed and so on. In other words, it acted as a way in for me to what had first appeared a rather bewildering prospect. I’m assuming that was its purpose? Anyway, that’s my 2p worth…

@Ike - any improvement is always welcome, IMHO. I hope some of your ideas will come to fruition, since everyone will benefit.

I can’t speak for Twitter, but it’s been my impression that it’s their philosophy to keep the service simple enough so that it’s usable on as many mobile phones as possible (in other words, usable via SMS).

As of today, we don’t even have a way to update our Twitter profiles via SMS, much less add tags to our profiles. I, for one, am looking forward to the day they when that feature becomes available.

Since twitter has decided to keep its service very basic and straightforward (at least for now), I think it’s more than welcomed and waited that a lot of “satellite” services will soon flourish around it. Personally I prefer to have alternative ways of viewing information since I believe it’s the only way to discover things that otherwise could be missed. So, I am pretty Ok with lists, directories, search, tag clouds and even more radical ways of representing data that’s why I really like Digg Labs.

Chris,

When Sara Nicole ( a new user of twitter ) asked about where were the Starter Packs we kicked of the conversation at Podcast Boston and from there created the Social Network Starter kit.

What surprised me was the amount of people who just dumped on the idea as not being sensible or feasible. At the time I applied to the Rule of Two Feet to them and suggested that a large group wanted to build a list so why dont we ?

I confess that the wiki caught me short since it wasnt clear to me on several readings that the password and invite key had been posted on the front page. Honestly I kept seeing it and not reading it .. Screen Dyslexia if ever there was. So of course I felt excluded ( not at all what you intended or planned ) but I liked the list and I saw a value in it.

The List the Pack didnt fail there were issues raised by others but the list itself was a grand plan.

It’s funny- I tried to get on a few times yesterday, to edit, but could never get a lock to do it, so I gave up, figuring I would try today or tommorrow.

This past weekend I was at a wonderful conference, and I found a whole new subset of twitters to follow i never knew existed. I love the mash up nature of twitter for me- I have marketing friends, “real life” friends, associates, education types, creative types,people I barely know, and others I have a great relationship building over time, because of what their interests are and what they share on twitter.

What the brou haha here tells me from a sociology POV is that people take their self-identity with different communities and subsets very personally, but some other people may see them as part of larger groups or categories.

And let’s face it- tweeterboard, twitterposter and other things like that are essentially doing the same thing as Twitter packs, but with less information on the outset.

The internet never ceases to amaze me with its ability to connect, and it’s ability to alienate. The speed at which we can build and destroy something. The reactionary nature, and people’s lack of patience to see how something develops over time before making blanket declarations of Good or Evil. Time does cure a lot, and we can’t expect something to be instantaneously perfect, (especially on a wiki). So before getting on your judicial robes, sleep on it, and see if what was true yesterday is still true today.

Patience is a virtue. Acting like children who don’t get their way and having a tantrum is not. If you decide to take all your toys and go home, and let something this silly drive you away from all the good of twitter, that’s your choice.

And above all, the conversation of how things evolve over a short period of time may be the most interesting part of this in the end.

I thought from the beginning and still believe that Twitter Packs are a great idea. I read some of the commentary that people wrote who were against the idea, and part of me felt that they were against it just for the sake of opposition. Or, perhaps, there was a frustration from certain self-proclaimed social media “gods and goddesses” that they weren’t at the forefront of this effort nor could control it. Who knows. Regardless, kudos to you for actually developing a way for communities of people to come together, and leaving it to them to do it in a way they want.

I think this is a case in which you can’t make everyone happy. It’s not as if you are limiting people to only one category. I, myself, have put myself into four. And in only one day I met some phenomenally interesting people I otherwise wouldn’t have met.

The only complaint is that editing the wiki and adding oneself and others to categories is daunting, but Shannon Whitley came up with a great idea for fixing that (http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/).

I think that rather than the Twitter community at large clamoring against a directory, they should be working together positively to try to improve it.

Funny you should mention that, Jennifer. Shannon and I had already been working on that solution together. Please remove me from your “clamoring and whining” list and move me over to the “helping and improving” list.

That said, I’ll throw another idea out for the group. If you want to help others jump into Social Media, that’s a laudable goal. But others could use this same concept to subvert the system. There’s more than a little backlash against feed stats garnered by those select few that got into certain Google Reader packs a while back. It’s an appearance of influence with little real value.

I would promote any tool that makes it easier for people to do what they want with a technology. But those who are *really* serious about getting others to understand Social Media need to put the disclaimer out there: NO ONE CAN DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU. It would be a disservice to all of us if companies and individuals came into these communities with the expectation that someone else can do the heavy lifting. Do we want Amalgamated Industries waltzing by and buying 3 bushels of Twitter, and 5 cords of blogging? When it becomes too off-the-shelf, it becomes too commoditized, and those entities are doomed to make big mistakes.

Let’s cultivate an expectation that it’s about communities of people, and not about quickly assembling something that resembles one.

Oy vay. Are we in high school again? Are the geek girls jealous of the cheerleaders? Are the jocks bullying the nerds? LOL!!!

I don’t see Twitter as clique-ish at all. You join and your community grows organically, but … you have to do your part to be social. Do you fit into all the groups of people you meet IRL?

Who cares if you only Twit with 4 of your nearest and dearest or have a following of 400? The app is there to use as *you* wish.

And come on, groups of people who communicate on twitter with each other (I prefer to look at them as flocks) are NOT like some underground cabal plotting the end of the universe.

This was an interesting sociological experiment, to be sure.

I think it’s cool to see twitters by geographic location. It helps to “place” everyone.

I think it’s really funny that people need to bash each other either way for making salient criticisms OR supporting the whole endeavor. When I shared my thoughts and people rushed to bash what I was saying or make snarky little remarks, I was like… what? Are we adults? Are you serious?

Why does discussion on the Internet need to be so sarcastic and belittling? I mean, I know why, but man… for the “future of social media”, we sound more socially awkward than anything.

I’d love to see a discussion happen that didn’t involve immediately defaulting to the “bitch” setting.

Just a thought.

@meg — well, it’s not a *real* internet debate until Godwin’s Law is invoked.

[…] Chris Brogan on using an open, public wiki to power his Twitter Packs website: Think about this: ANYONE has the password, ANYONE can edit the list. That’s the opposite of exclusionary. Anyone can be part of any list they choose to identify with. […]

Chris, I want to thank you for replying to my question regarding your derivation of the term “pack.” In my geekier days, I used twenty-sided dice, rather than cards, to play my games, so I wasn’t aware of the term.

I think that some of the fear that arose from this wiki was the fact that we were perceived to have lost control about what people said about us. Theoretically, I could go into the wiki and put Chris into the “black lesbian Dodgers fan” pack, and no one could prevent me from doing so.

I took a step back and thought about this more generally, and asked myself, “What level of control is appropriate for a given information source?” And since you’re obviously not going to please everybody, should you err on the side of openness, or on the side of caution?

After thinking about it, I concluded that we’d be better off erring on the side of openness. Yes, someone could label me as a black lesbian Yankees fan, and I’d have to remove it. But that’s better than having a moderated, controlled group calling me a black lesbian Yankees fan, in which I wouldn’t have the ability to correct the record.

One note: if you’re wondering who edited what, you can review the information at http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/changes.php. I couldn’t find a link to this page on the wiki itself, but it does exist (a similar page exists for the Twitter fans wiki, which is how I knew to look for it).

even if someone “mis- categorizes” me, i think it may lead to interesting conversations and of course you have no obligation to follow them back.

I love the meta of the conversation, especially in the context of quotes with the vibe ‘oh what’s the big deal are we in high school’ because it illustrates (not wrong or right, not calling people out, it’s a very real emotion there) a part of ’social’ ________ that has nothing to do with technology but human-ness. You can’t solve prejudice with software.

It’s like the top 8 on myspace, kinda like having to pick your favorite child. Who’s gonna be pissed off they didn’t ‘make the cut’?

Ask people with differing opinions on ‘mommy bloggers’.. Some wear that like a badge and others avoid it/despise it like the plague. Now if that’s not part of ’social’ I don’t know what is.

We must include the nasty side of social when talking about it in order to be all-inclusive. Cliques and in-crowds and idols and enemies are just as real as community, networking, bonding, connections and collaboration.

[…] twitter pack, visualization I’ve had this picture in my head for a little while, and Chris Brogan’s Twitter Packs made me think about it […]

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[…] mentioned somewhere. whether it be those talking about how they use it  or those talking about what it needs to add to keep ahead of the competition. Heck I’ve even a few posts about the service myself not […]

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My only regret in all this is that I’ve been so busy with my “day job” that I haven’t had time to get immersed in all that’s happening with your Twitter Packs! I read your post, went out and made an edit and have completely missed out on all the goings on… my bad for sure.

But I must say, I truly appreciate the idea and hope I get to reap the benefits. I’ve been twittering for a couple of months now, but pretty aimlessly. I’m hoping the Twitter Pack will point me in the right direction! Thanks Chris.

[…] the Twitterverse just now, I kept getting a server timeout. Then I noticed Chris’ post about the reaction the Twitter Packs idea. 55 comments and counting. And I saw that GeekMommy closed the comments to her “wolf […]

[…] platform myspace opens doors to developers — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7217975.stm Hursley Test Blog — http://testingblues.com/ Twitterpack — http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/ Twitterpack goes off the rails — http://chrisbrogan.com/twitter-packs-goes-off-the-rails-quick/ […]

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