I Was a Twitter Reject

Posted on June 17th, 2009 by Cynthia D'Amour

    And no one cared.

An interesting conversation took place on Twitter.

  • Twitter is an online community.
  • You communicate 140 characters at a time.
  • You can follow conversations by using # in front of key words.

I tried to join the conversation.

  • Used the correct #code.
  • Saw my tweets (messages) post.
  • But did not get engaged in the conversation by others.

I know there had to be some technical glitch.

  • And I still felt rejected.
  • No matter what I said - silence.
  • And everyone else was welcomed, asked for more information, etc.

It was like high school.

  • The popular kids got to run the conversation.
  • The clueless just watched.
  • And were allowed to be envious of the popular kids’ brilliance.

Yuck - what a downer way to end the day!

Makes me think of chapter leaders…do you promote an emergency hotline for members who have trouble connecting?

Filed under: Getting More Members Involved, Keeping members

« And the Connection Is Another Bite - I’m Getting Itchy »

6 Responses to “I Was a Twitter Reject”

  1. Maggie McGary, on June 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm Said:

    This EXACT thing happened to me the one time I tried to participate in #assnchat too! I never did figure out what was wrong.

    I have to tell you–and maybe I shouldn’t admit this, given that I’m supposedly a Twitter fanatic–I HATE Twitter chats. Actually, it’s one of several things I hate about Twitter–hashtags, the fact that Twitter doesn’t retain search stuff for more than a few weeks, the fact that it craps out far too frequently for my tastes.

    Twitter is good for many things but chat, search and reliability are not among them.

  2. Jeremy Griffin, on June 17th, 2009 at 5:42 pm Said:

    I agree Twitter chats are very frustrating, but they do at least get the information out to others even if they are not part of the chat.

    I wonder if next time we should use something like tinychat.com from the tinyurl company. You can use it to make disposable chat rooms for any conversation and easily share the link on Twitter…just a thought, but definitely don’t want to leave people (especially Cynthia) feeling unengaged.

  3. Cynthia D'Amour, on June 17th, 2009 at 9:38 pm Said:

    @Maggie - I actually like the rush of Twitter chats. However, being blocked from playing was a drag!

    I agree re the lack of search longevity.

    One thing that struck me today was that the chat seemed be going well. I people were interacting. No one knew I was out of the loop. Lonely place.

    @Jeremy - You are very kind to want to make sure I feel engaged! Watching from the outside is not fun.

  4. Jeff Hurt, on June 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm Said:

    I’m so sorry this happend. I was in bed following on my iPhone and saw your tweets. I also thought I saw the moderator tweet you back. Maybe the pain medicine was working too well & I was having a vision. :)

    If Twitter search or Twitter API is not working properly, or there’s latency issues, some people do not show up in TweetChat.com or Tweetgrid.com. It’s been an issue from time to time.

    I actually participted in a twitter chat today and the stream ran so fast, I had to slow it down with settings in order to keep up. Tweetchat.com is also asking that if you don’t show up, to please send them a tweet so they can research. http://twitter.com/@tweetchat

    I think it’s imperative that good moderators try to make sure everyone is engaged.

    Regarding longevity, with #eventprofs, we archive our chats on a wiki. In Tweetchat, we capture everyone’s tweet with Cntrl C and then paste into a word document. We then put that word document into our wiki so it’s archived for anyone to read.

  5. Cynthia D'Amour, on June 18th, 2009 at 5:13 pm Said:

    Hi Jeff!

    Pain meds and twitter chat = interesting combination!

    Thx for all the how-tos. I’ll have to remember in the future.

    Last night I was in typical member mode. I didn’t have a lot of time. I wanted it to work right the first time I tried. And I didnt’ want to think - long day. ;-)

    Jeff is a fab moderator. I know he didn’t see me.

    In spite of it, I still got the twinge - which I didn’t take personally; however was interesting to notice. I’m pretty tech savvy as a general rule.

    What if I had been a newbie urged to stretch to get with the times and my association was going to show me how with Twitter chat…?

    My misdirected frustration would have been towards the association for not making things work - not Twitter. And because I was new I wouldn’t know better.

    It’s all food for thought for online application - and in real life too!

  6. Cynthia D’Amour on Leadership and Life » Just Call Me the Twitter Ghost!, on June 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm Said:

    [...]  No one saw me - again. [...]

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