I am not a Twitter rock star. I follow 140 people who I truly believe help me grow, and I have as of this morning 163 following me. I have found Twitter to be a powerful part of my PLN. I continually learn from my network as they post interesting comments, ideas, and links. It appears to me to embrace the concept of the Creative Commons – a community sharing alike.
When I get an email notice that someone in now following me, I check that person out to see if I should do likewise and add this person to my network (or block if it is obvious spam).
I got a notice that Todd Gilmore from Oklahoma was now following me. I checked out his Twitter account and see that he is following 1,776 and has 227 following him. From Twitter, I linked to his website – Technology Story. This is where it gets interesting. Here is what his site says:
“Executives must stay current on the happenings in the technology marketplace at this point. To do anything less is to become irrelevant as a leader. There is a fire hose of announcements, analytics, and trends getting published every day. No one with a real job could spend the time necessary to review all of this information in order to find the valuable pieces. This is what we do on your behalf. Technology Story is a filtered river of information that gets delivered every other day or so. It is reduced to easy to read bites so that you can invest as little time as possible and still be up to date on the latest. Subscribers also have the ability to search the archives in order to resurrect a piece of information they once read that has now become specifically needed. The feeds include many links to deeper resources, surveys, and recommendations. The cool Website of the day feature is alone worth the price of admission.”
The price of admission is $100 a year.
Now, I am sure Todd Gilmore and who ever he works with use more than Twitter to filter the river of information flowing each day over the web, but should I facilitate this through my Twittering? Is he brilliantly using Web 2.0 tools in a way that makes money for himself or is he using my freely given intellectual property to profit only himself? I am not seeing this as a Share Alike relationship.
Is anyone else bothered by this? Should I ignore it, block him from my Twitter account, or follow him to see if he shares through Twitter and helps my PLN grow? I would be interested in what others think.
{Photo Credits: Tallent Show, ryancr}
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Kia ora Britt!
I’m not a Twitter follower – never tried it. Perhaps I should. Tell you what though – I think the picture of the g-pigs is awesome. So do my daughters!
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
I usually blocks this type of users for an elementary reason (maybe it sounds selfish): Where do they find the time to follow all these 1700 people?
I am not sure about the quality of that person’s tweets to my PLE.
Im liking that picture very much!
I used to have a guinea pig by it passed away.
Rob
Britt, I am the guy that writes half the content of Technology Story and Todd is a person that shares ideas and thoughts with me. It is interesting to me that you are doing the math on your ideas – trying to gauge whether a relationship is equal in value. If it makes you feel better, we are a generator of ideas in technology story, not merely a repeater of ideas. The odds that any of us would carp one of your idea is very low, but I suppose it could happen. I tend not to measure my idea exchange with people in ways that lead to a measurement of value. I simply share my ideas, and hope that I help humanity in some small way. And for that, we get $100 a year from the many people that appreciate those ideas…
I am the person you so passionately speak about. That is cool. I am a new twitter user and I don’t subscribe to your philosophy nor do I believe out of billions of twitter users that I am out to get your few contacts. I do however, love the wonderful world of twitter and WILL continue to play with the stream dynamics. If you don’t want people following you, then you need to click the privacy options ;). There are many misconceptions of tools and who people are and speculation is not usually the answer. I do have all day to chat about it though so I would be more than happy to discuss any of it in email, but I have not ever received an email from you. Instead, you speculate and to be honest, I have looked at thousands of twitter sites. I do not mess with people who have privacy checked. I have received tons of comments and I AM an experienced user in virtual worlds. This is what I do. I have time to passionately talk about things and people, and learn a great deal. I actually think what you say here is wrong and part of the problem people have about trying to protect themselves behind brick walls. I have marked your page and will read everything on your entire page. I highly doubt that you will ever know who I am. It is odd to me that you say you are an online learner and the only way to learn, is to meet people. Better check your own resume.