Guest Blog Post by @markdavidgerson

I didn’t want to do it. I never want to do it. Every time someone says, “You’ve got to join X, Y or Z ,” I try to ignore it if it has anything to do with social media.

I try to resist, but…

I didn’t want to blog. I knew nothing about blogs and tried to keep it that way. But a little voice kept nudging and nudging and nudging me. So 30 months ago I broke down and created a blog. Now, I have two…and a newsletter.

I didn’t want to do social networks. I didn’t get them, and I didn’t want to take the time to learn. Now, I’m on so many I’ve lost count.

It began with MySpace, and when it expanded tentatively to include FaceBook and a few writing sites, I thought I was done.

Then I discovered Ning. Rather, Ning discovered me.

Given the number of Ning-network invitations that hit my inbox every day, I’m starting to believe that there’s a Ning site for every computer-enabled adult on the planet. If there isn’t, there soon will be. And they’ll all be looking for me to join.

At last count, I’m still (mercifully) under two dozen Nings. But there could be an equal number that I’ve lost track of somewhere along the way.

Then Twitter happened.

I was my usual social media-resistant self when a MySpace friend (@gay_love_coach) first mentioned it. I poked around the Twitter site, watched the Twitter video and, like many Twitteresisters, didn’t get it.

I didn’t get it for months and months. And then two strangely related phenomena kicked in: 1) my attraction to computer-related distractions that keep me from writing; and 2) my success at using social media to promote myself and my books.

You see, I’m a writer with two recently published books who’s always on the lookout for new ways to get the word out (and new ways to avoid working on Book #3).

Book-promotion potential is the social-media siren that always seduces me.

But if book-promotion is the inducement, that motivation is soon overtaken by all the cool people I meet.

And so it has been with Twitter. In the short time I’ve been around, I’ve made great professional contacts. In fact, within days of joining I met

• @WritingSpirit, who almost immediately named herself captain of the cheerleading squad for my book The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write,

• @smithereensblog, who promoted that same book in his TwitLit contest, and

• @jnbammer, who hasn’t stopped supporting me and my blog.

I’ve also connected with fellow authors, bloggers and coaches—and learned much from all of them.

But, as with MySpace, the “social” aspect of “social media” is also surfacing, and I’m meeting people I’d love to visit with over a cup of coffee—if only we were in the same city.

If we were, I wonder whether we’d find ourselves communicating in 140-character sound bites and using those strange, Twitter-specific abbreviations that squeeze thoughts into Twitter’s arbitrary character-counter.

“Hi! How R U?” I’d ask my new friend.

“Gr8,” he or she would reply. “Mlk 4 yr T?”

Guest post for Twitter Stars by @markdavidgerson

Mark David Gerson is a blogger, inspirational speaker, creativity coach, and award-winning author of The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy and The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call.

Mark David Gerson’s personal site: http://markdavidgerson.com

Mark David Gerson’s New Earth Chronicles (blog): http://newearthchronicles.com

The Voice of Your Muse blog: http://thevoiceofyourmuse.com

Mark David Gerson’s books: http://lightlinesmedia.com

Mark David Gerson’s events/appearances: http://booktour.com/author/mark_david_gerson

Mark July 23rd on your calendars. This is the Twitter version of the 1929 stock market crash! Twitter Stars is ruined! lol. (Yeah, I know. That’s a bit dramatic.)

See that little badge to your right in the side column? Does it still say 2,563? Yeah, it took me a year to develop my following. That’s right. I opened my Twitter account on July 15th, 2007.

I just went from following 2441 people and being followed by 2,570 people to now just following 226 and being followed by 291? Wait. WHAT!?

I have 3,894 Favorites, 1,328 DM’s, and 9,856 updates. I had 2,570 followers and was following 2,441 people. At least half of my blurbs were @ replies. I am not a bot. I am not a spammer. I would like my account back please. Thank you.

Search.Twitter.com

Get Satisfaction

Status.Twitter.com

I would imagine that everyone was suddenly struck by the same exact idea I had; immediately go into your Gmail account and start clicking the URL for every Twitter user who has ever followed you. That ought to fix the scalability issue almost immediately!

Even @CreativeSage burst forth with a hearty, “WTF??” and she’s the sweetest person on the planet!

I am now cut off from my clients on Twitter, blog contributers, and members of the Shift+One Media blog network. Worse of all, I’m cut off from @br3ndabot.

From Twitter

CreativeSage Hello, new Twitter friends! I’m still experiencing Twitter glitch that won’t let me follow more people. I’ve sent msg. to Twitter support.:)

CreativeSage Welcome, new Twitter friends! I’m very annoyed at Twitter for abruptly halting ability to follow back, with no warning. Hope to change that.

CreativeSage @Jack @Ev @Biz After last tweet, I suddenly LOST over 1000 followers & many I’m following—WTF?? Please stop limiting my Twitter friends!:(

CreativeSage Have you suddenly had Twitter followers cut or Twitter limiting your ability to follow? I just “lost” 1000 followers abruptly, can’t follow.

jungleg @markdavidson actually, a bunch of people are reporting the wipeout of both followers and following http://tinyurl.com/6yayj5

markdavidson I just went from following 2400 people and being followed by 2,560 people. Now I’m following 226 and being followed by 291? WHAT?

markdavidson @Jack @Ev @Biz After last tweet, I suddenly LOST over 1000 followers & many I’m following—WTF?? Please stop limiting my Twitter friends!:(

markdavidson @CreativeSage I just stole your last blurb… Now how am I supposed to DM people?

markdavidson Wow. Good job Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/6yayj5

CreativeSage @mousewords @markdavidson You too? I hope it’s temporary, but it does make it impossible to DM many friends or add new ones who added

Pistachio either 42,000 Twitterers just dumped @kevinrose, or something’s afoot in Denmark tonight?

markdavidson @Pistachio I just lost 2,400 followers… including you!

Pistachio @markdavidson what worries me is that we actually *did* get disconnected. not just the appearance of disconnected. oy.

markdavidson @Pistachio Yep. Major bummer. No more DMs. Really bad. Cut off from clients and from blog contributors. And I can’t follow people back.

CreativeSage @Jack @Ev @Biz I second @MarkDavidson’s tweet & others who suddenly got many followers cut & can’t follow back. You’re impairing business.

CreativeSage @shepherdfx It seems to be happening to some people and not others—just saw post on http://getsatisfaction.com/ I doubt 1000 are spammers.

CreativeSage @Karoli Unfortunately, many of the people being abruptly cut are friends, not spammers. Need to be able to DM & add legit friends/colleagues

cory_grimes @Jay900 Yeah. They tried to get rid of spammers, but they just ****ed up everyone’s followers.

cory_grimes @gamingangel No. Twitter is effing up right now. It’s happening to everyone.

cory_grimes IT’S SO BAD: http://i36.tinypic.com/2cqbr83.jpg

cory_grimes Twitter is “working” on fixing the followers glitch: http://is.gd/11Y0

From the official Twitter blog:

Posting links to Twitter is great and we encourage people to do so. However, spammers are posting links on a whole different scale and they’re doing something else we call Aggressive Following. This behavior entails following thousands of other accounts in the hope of reciprocation and it really peeves Twitter users because many of us are sensitive to our Follower count—we don’t want email notifications triggered by spammers and we don’t want to see our avatar on their profile page.

Those who have created thousands of accounts, posted thousands of the same link, or aggressively followed way too many people, stand out like a sore thumb to our support team because they are usually blocked by hundreds or thousands of well behaved Twitter users. This simple feedback is one of the ways we detect and delete spam accounts but there are also preventative measures and more we could be doing.

I recently found myself unable to follow people back on Twitter. I have a practice of following people back who follow me. Also, once or twice a month, I will go on a following spree and add new people to my timeline. The last time I went on a following spree was back in May. Part of using Twitter means following new people. I tend to use Twitter in bursts. This is just my style. There are no posted rules of conduct for following or un-following. I just sort of wing it. If there were posted rules or guidelines, I would follow them.

On Monday night, @eeUS was the the first person to alert me to this being a Twitter-wide problem affecting many users and DM’d me the following links this morning:

ZDNet: Twitter anti-spam efforts go overboard

Twittermaven: Do we hate spam that much?

The problem with punishing people for breaking undisclosed or ambiguous rules is that learned helplessness will set in.

Studies using electric shocks as a source of pain show that once people have been taught helplessness by being given shocks at random, unpredictably, and beyond their control, they no longer try to avoid the pain. The subjects in the experiments came to believe that all future shocks would be beyond their control, like the earlier random shocks, so why bother trying to escape?

Is Twitter becoming a Seligman experiment? Are Twitter users going to be randomly punished based on some undisclosed set of rules or algorithm? How can we connect our actions on Twitter with the results? If blocking users from following people back is the solution to Twitter’s scalability issues, then many people are going to feel helpless and just give up.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview Twitter user @jesatiu, who discovered himself experiencing the exact same issue that I and many others were having:

Mark Davidson: So when did you first notice that you can’t follow people back on Twitter?

Jesse: Yesterday.

Jesse: Happened twice, just thought they had somehow blocked me—wasn’t sure why—don’t think many do block me, I’m a pretty nice guy.

Mark Davidson: I experienced the same problem and so have others!

Jesse: Today it’s been about ten different people. I started looking hard for those I don’t follow, as a test.

Jesse: So far have not been able to add anyone.

Mark Davidson: Have you tried refreshing your browser and trying again?

Jesse: Yeah. but haven’t cleared cache yet

Jesse: I have logged in and out couple times.

Mark Davidson: That’s a good idea. Perhaps I’ll try clearing my cache as well. Seems though, it’s more likely to be server-side.

Jesse: Think so…

Jesse: OK just now twitter to @jpostman—his reply is only one in my tab.

Mark Davidson: How long have you been using Twitter for?

Jesse: About a year I’d say, maybe a bit less… all of this year for sure.

Mark Davidson: Would you consider yourself to be a spammer or a bot? lol!

Jesse: Not at all—I’m twitterati according to @guykawasaki.

Jesse: My posts w/ link ratio is extremely low, and all my content is original.

Mark Davidson: However, I’ve noticed that you follow a lot more people than follow you. Do you think that might be the reason?

Jesse: I thought about that, but I’d never seen any declaration from twitter tos to believe that would cause an issue.

Mark Davidson: True. Me either!

Mark Davidson: Have you put in a Twitter Help ticket?

Jesse: At least a technical one—however it might make users wary—no ticket as of yet.

Mark Davidson: I put in a Help ticket but I haven’t received a response back yet.

Mark Davidson: I think I’m losing Followers over it. People probably think I’m being rude or elitist. I normally follow everyone back!

Mark Davidson: What effect is this having on your Twitter usage?

Jesse: Yeah I hear you. just got reply back from one user who I couldn’t add. had asked her straight out if she blocked me, she said no and indicated she can’t DM me…also, her reply replaced joel’s as the only one in my tab! lol…so I can access only the latest reply.

Jesse: Effect is that I’m spending valuable time figuring it out…lol…but I understand and am compassionate about free service… I love twitter. I wish we would make it “employee owned” so to speak.

Mark Davidson: Wow. That’s kind of limiting at the very best. Hopefully Twitter will get it fixed soon and we can all return to our normal social interaction. I understand that Twitter has been experiencing a lot of outages because of scalability issues but…

Mark Davidson: By reducing the features that made Twitter successful in the first place and now this, all they are doing is making Twitter unusable. It seems like they are punishing their biggest users!

From Twitter

markdavidson @Spodjed I always follow everyone back. For me Twitter is more about communication than broadcasting. Waiting for a fix. Hope it comes soon.

markdavidson Just an FYI, many of us are currently not able to follow people back @chrisbrogan, @pprlisa, and myself for example. Frustrating.

pprlisa @BethHarte 0011000111 00000111 11111111111100!!! AND 0001111 001 take that

pprlisa @akaMonty 001111 0000111111 1111000 well Twitter thinks I am a bot, so I am playing the part

akaMonty @pprlisa Borg maybe, but not bot!

SayAnythingJen frustrated that i can’t follow anyone…@sayanythingkari is my new cohost and new to twitter

eeUS @chrisbrogan We, people last night, and @pprlisa were just talking about that last night. I think it might be some algorithm that’s weird

eeUS @chrisbrogan that twitter’s using to try to find bots. Seems to be random.. Maybe you should look into it? Ask @pprlisa, she contacted @twitter

femaleprodigy @pprlisa yeah i would pin you as a spammer too.. just kidding about

pprlisa @mediaphyter thanks for the post Jennifer - hopefully this will help a little - I have been IDd as a spammer…I AM NOT A BOT!!!

JoeCascio @pprlisa A Bot, huh? You’re going to have to work on your robot dance moves now.

pprlisa @mediaphyter I know, I am SO sad that I cant follow anymore people - i have begged @Twitter to remove me from the spammer list - ahhhh

GeekMommy @sendchocolate - are you capable of adding new followers right now? Just trying to figure out the threshhold here

GeekMommy Okay, if you’re unable to follow folks like I am - I started a GetSatisfaction thread. http://tinyurl.com/6keymb

GeekMommy @Mommiedearest - I get emails of new followers, but I can’t follow them back… driving me crazy!

eeUS @JamiMiami Hi Jami, @pprlisa ’s making trouble again today

JamiMiami @eeUS she is isn’t she? What has she done now? @pprlisa have you been banished? We’ll come & save you.

GeekMommy @sopan - they just implemented new anti-spam stuff, but it seems to be impacting other folks like me too. :\

GeekMommy @chrisbrogan - think it’s a bit of a glitch based on their new anti-spammer policies. b/c I have same issue & not following as many as you

GeekMommy @sopan - heh. I mean, if it’s blocking @chrisbrogan, then I’m in good company! it also did the same to @creativesage yesterday.

GeekMommy @julesac - thank you!! and I’m sorry I haven’t followed back yet - Twitter is keeping me from doing so

GeekMommy @saxdiva - thanks for the feedback - apparently, it’s something to do with larger numbers :\

tindle @markdavidson I like that way of thinking..there are a lot of Broadcasters around here..clearly, they don’t understand the Earthman’s ways..

helenmosher @markdavidson I follow people back when they actually converse with me.

Spodjed @markdavidson Sorry to hear about the “follow” problem. Sometimes you have to reload the member’s page and then the follow function works.

markdavidson Hmmm. @GeekMommy, @pprlisa, @chrisbrogan, and @SayAnythingJen it would seem, can’t follow anyone back either. I sent in a HALP! ticket.

markdavidson For more info on the “Hey, what the heck! I can’t follow people back!” issue, I’ve starred a bunch of blurbs in my Favorites. The new whale!

Spodjed @markdavidson Couldn’t agree more… “…Tweeter is more about communication than broadcasting.”

markdavidson So if anyone un-followed me because I haven’t followed you back, I apologize. I follow everyone back… if and when I can.

markdavidson @helenmosher And why wouldn’t someone choose to converse with you? That’s just crazy! Your timeline rocks!

markdavidson @Spodjed Tried refreshing. Still can’t follow back. It seems that anyone above a certain follower count is experiencing a similar issue.

chrisbrogan Oh neato. Twitter has capped the amount of people I can follow.

iFroggy @chrisbrogan Any excuse not to follow me, eh?! Just kidding.

IdoNotes @chrisbrogan I cant imagine they would pick a number like 10996 for a max allowed to follow number. Maybe 11K is where it is set

sopan @GeekMommy @chrisbrogan mentioned earlier that Twitter wasn’t letting him follow more people too. Is there a max # you can add?

helenmosher @markdavidson dunno, but i have a lot of lurkers, and I’m content to let them lurk cause I have enough trouble following my timeline.

helenmosher @markdavidson but when they reply, I follow back. (And thanks for the compliment!)

Spodjed @markdavidson Probably Twitter has installed some following quota because of spamers.

jesatiu @annepmitchell do you have me blocked? or, is twitter not working? im not being able to follow folks anymore? anyone else having this issue?

jesatiu help. why can’t i follow people? anyone else having this issue? help…i found some cool local folks and it won’t let me add them~>?!

jesatiu @markdavidson thank you-was starting to think i had some sort of “block this guy bullseye” on my back. hoping i’d not pissed off that many;)

jesatiu @markdavidson - pleasure discussing twitter’s anomaly. hope they straighten it out! will send in a ticket, too. best, Mark.