Last weekend I took my third round trip on MegaBus between Boston and New York. On the way there was fine enough and the wifi worked for the most part. Yet on the way back was a totally different issue.
MegaBus subcontracts out to Dattco Bus Company for some of its routes, including the Boston/NYC one. These buses however have no wifi, in spite of MegaBus’s advertisement that their buses have wifi. While I’m sure company representatives will say something about there being no guarantee of wifi on any given bus, I feel this is a case of Bait and Switch. They advertise on the basis of cheap tickets and wifi. Rarely do you get a ticket as cheap as they advertise and rarely do you get wifi. Worse, when you ask the drivers on the Dattco buses about the wifi, they are kinda assholes about it.
I’m not saying to “not” take MegaBus, but if you’ve got something online that you must do, then there’s a significant chance that you won’t be doing it on the Megabus. My recommendation is to try for the Bolt Bus, as their wifi is much more stable and actually exists on all of the buses.
You followed me on Twitter. Maybe you followed me because you thought what I was saying was interesting. For many they follow people seemingly in order to get a reciprocal follow back. Yet, for some reason I didn’t follow back. A few days later I get an email in my box from Qwitter that you unfollowed me on Twitter, and that’s ok. Why did I not follow you back?
Let’s take a look at the reasons that I didn’t follow you back and think about them a bit:
You fell through the cracks- I hate to say it, but Twitter and my social media network aren’t my highest priorities in life at the moment. They are up there, but if push comes to shove then sometimes you get lost in the shuffle and for this I apologize. If you unfollow me, I’ll likely notice and follow you back then if you fell into this category and we can work to make things right. I’m trying to make this one happen less and less.
You don’t Tweet in English- I think it’s wonderful that the Internet is filled with people that speak various languages, but unfortunately I only speak English and can grok a bit of Latin at best. If you’re Tweeting in another language that’s really cool, but I’m not going to follow what I can’t read at all. Maybe someday I’ll learn, but thank you for the follow. I assume you’re better than me and can read multiple languages or you wouldn’t have done so.
You are clearly a spammer- Twitter has gotten better at catching these, but if you’re a spammer (either automated or just a person that’s an obvious spammer/company) but I don’t follow back people that are just trying to sell their book, diet or new type of kitty litter.
Your follow ratios are fucked- These come in two categories. First; I have literally been followed by people following 30,000+ other people, and with 4000 people following them. There is literally no way that a human can parse that much information, or actually care about what I have to say. I will never follow these people back and they are generally also spammers, or soon to be spammers. No thanks. Then there’s the people who just make some bad choices on Twitter. Try to keep your ratio at no worse than 1:1. 0.9:1 is better, as it shows that you aren’t following every spam-bot back yourself and that you likely actually listen to the conversation as it happens. I see a lot of people that are following 400, but only have 40 in return or worse. That’s a 10:1 ratio and uncool. I could expound on this for a while, but basically if you’re following way too many, then I’m not following you back likely. There are occasional exceptions, but that’s the general rule. Your ratios can be a tad off if you’re still in the sub 100 following/followers area. Everyone gets room to learn.
You don’t Tweet enough- These happen to sometimes be people with screwed up ratios, and it totally confuses me. I generally assume they are about to turn into spammers. I got followed today by someone that was following 1,300 people and followed by 100. She had tweeted 4 times. Why in the world would you follow 1,300 people but only tweet 4 times?!?! I’m almost never one to complain about over-tweeting and I’d much rather see a person with active and healthy conversations than someone with none.
And finally: You aren’t interesting- Ouch. I know that hurts doesn’t it? These are rare, but sometimes if someone is borderline on all of the above things then this really becomes the make or break factor. Actually it can break all of the others pretty easily. If you never @reply, and don’t say at least one thing that makes me think, “That’s something interesting” in your first front page on Twitter then I generally don’t follow you back. Most people luckily are actually interesting.
On the bright side, there’s some people I try to always follow back:
People at an event: Unless you are terribly boring, blatently whoring out a product, or something else then if you were at an event I attended I will likely follow you back no matter what. I tried to follow back every single person from Podcamp Pittsburgh (#PCPBG3) regardless of ratios and stuff because they were all cool people and many were still learning about Twitter.
People from Boston: Again, unless you terribly violate some of the above then if you are from Boston or nearby I will likely follow you back. I figure there’s a good chance of running into you and it’s pretty embarrassing to have not followed back someone. Plus, we already have something in common and likely know many of the same people
You are friend with my friends: If you’re talking a lot with my friends in your first page on Twitter then I’ll likely follow you back. My friends/network can vet people for me.
We’ve had a conversation: If you’ve @replied me for something I’ve said, then I’ll likely follow you back. Ditto if you commented on a photo of mine on Flickr or something. Conversation makes me think that I’ll have more of it in the future, which is what I want.
Growing your network is hard and you have to make a lot of decisions along the way. It sometimes conflicts with the fact that you want to keep your signal to noise ratios solid, but at the same time increase your voice and reach. Everyone’s got their own guidelines and methods of doing things. These aren’t the “right” wants, but just my ways of doing it.
How do you determine who to follow and who to ignore and risk having unfollow you?
Tonight I went to the O’Reilly Ignite Boston 4 and took a handful of photos. I saw a lot of great friends there and had a good time hearing the presentations. Here’s a few of the photos. Check out the Flickr album here. If you what a full resolution tiff of any photo, just kick me an email and I’ll send it to you. Everything’s creative commons NC-BY-SA as always. (note: phase 1 of the photos going up first, the rest later tonight)
So I’m on the bus going to work. I am thinking, “I’d really like to show my bosses what I’ve learned this weekend at Podcamp and perhaps get the signoff to go to more of them nation-wide”. Seems like it should be a fairly simple debriefing right?
I’m honestly not sure the best way to describe it, and also pass on the information learned, the contacts made, and the experiences had to other people. It seems to be insufficient to simply describe what I saw there. Many of the things learned were subtile and a process of growth rather than revelation.
Even the “takeaways” that people had from Podcamp really aren’t a good description to summize what went on this weekend, and are generally only relevant to people who were there from what I’ve seen.
So help me out here, what can you describe that you learned at Podcamp or gained that you could outline to someone higher up in a company as directly benefitting the organization? Maybe I’m making too big of a deal of it and the 100+ new twitter followers, huge stack of business cards, few tips here and there, and friends made are what I should value the most and explain that to them. In fact, that’s what I’m going to try. Wish me luck.
I’m also giving a presentation on how we can use Twitter at work to get more done. Slides posted to Slideshare soon.
I didn’t take that many photos at Podcamp Boston 3, but I took a handful that I thought were decent and fun so here they are on my flickr feed. Enjoy! Comment, favorite, share! BY-NC-SA
