Like many of you, I use Twitter. (@chriswebb) I use it for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional but have always thought of it as a very ‘personal’ tool. By that I mean it’s an ecosystem of *people* that despite the distance and in some cases, anonymity, relate to each other. It is a social tool – I mean it is called “social media” for a reason.

But I am seeing a trend among several users who are opting for an automated response to everyone who follows them. For example, today I got the following warm-hearted response from someone I followed:

“Thanks for following me! Find GREAT Real Estate deals w/my E-Book (link omitted)”

Wow, how…personal.

So, do I respond personally to everyone who follows me on Twitter? No. But I also don’t send some impersonal canned response either. Instead, I’ll choose to actually engage you in conversation at some point using the tool. That’s the point, isn’t it? Just using Twitter and other tools like it as just another channel to send the same spammy messages one might use in other media is completely missing the point.

The same goes for Authors who use social tools as part of their personal platforms to help support their books. I encourage you to use tools like Twitter – in fact it is becoming more important that you do just that. But use the tools in the way they were meant to be used.

Why not just tweet a simple welcome to new followers?  Maybe 5 or so at a time?  At least then people know you are actually doing it and not relegating it to some cold, automated script. If you can’t manage that for some reason, then just skip it.  I’d rather see nothing than an autoreply.

Do you use an automated, canned response for your Twitter followers?

Two weeks ago, Scrabble owner Hasbro sent a take down notice to Facebook.

Copyright infringement? Maybe. Big missed opportunity for Hasbro? Definitely.

Why shut Scrabulous down when there are so many other online clones out there? Hasbro probably has a case with respect to name confusion. But I think the real missed opportunity for Hasbro here was in not embracing this huge, connected, engaged (and vocal) community who loves their game.

Why not hire the the Aharwalla’s as game developers, re-brand Scrabulous as Scrabble and reap the rewards? If 2 Scrabble fans can cultivate a community base of 2.3 million voracious players, imagine what might be possible if a company like Hasbro threw their weight behind it?

Perhaps Hasbro has sold the electronic or online rights to the game to a 3rd party and now must defend that Agreement.  If so, fair enough and then this becomes a missed opportunity of another sort.

Facebook users obviously love games – they are some of the most installed and most active Facebook applications available. For a company like Hasbro, this could just be the tip of the iceberg. Imagine Battleship, Monopoly, Axis and Allies, or any number games from Hasbro’s huge portfolio as Facebook applications.

What do you think? Clear case of copyright infringement, or missed opportunity to engage fans in the social media era?

(Hat tip to Josh Quittner)

As I have written before, I keep 2 Twitter identities, one of which is one of our brands, Wrox.  The identities are distinctly different, but both “me” – @chriswebb is Chris Webb, editor who talks about publishing, social applications and their occasional intersection.  @wrox is still Chris Webb, editor, but the conversation focuses on programming, web development, .NET and other topics of interest to Wrox readers.

Why keep them separate?  Well, followers of @wrox may not care at all about what @chriswebb has to say about social media and publishing in general, while @chriswebb followers probably are not interested in the latest ASP.NET MVC release.  It is not obvious to @wrox followers that it is Chris Webb behind the username (although I don’t really hide that fact,) and I don’t think they care.  To them it’s just Wrox – a source of programming books and online content.

I touched on this subject briefly via Twitter earlier today, and got an intersting comment from a follower of both @wrox and @chriswebb:

@wrox is fundamentally different than, say, @mcdonalds or @tylenol
@wrox has the ability to gather a community (in this case developers) into one, big conversation. it’s a great experiment.

But back to Shel’s point – is Wrox being social or is it all just Chris Webb?  Is part of what defines the Wrox brand already social?  What do you think?

Collegaue Ellen Gerstein, who had been managing the Dummies Man Facebook profile, was recently alerted that Dummies Man was banned from using the social networking site and all evidence of him had been purged.

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation.

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations.

I think this is the beginning of a very intersting discussion. We didn’t impersonate anyone – we are Dummies Man, and he was only on Facebook as a goodwill ambassador for the brand. As Ellen says,

Over the months since, Dummies Man has been friending people, commenting on profiles and fan pages, and benignly exploring the site. It wasn’t a huge organized marketing campaign, more a way for us to dip a toe of the brand into the social networking waters.

Perhaps the profile could be considered as advertising a product, which may be the rub. I wonder if this precludes other well-known brand ambassadors from having identities on Facebook? I see that the Michelin Man has a page. I wonder if Disney approached Zuckerberg about a Mickey Mouse profile what the response would be.

What do you think? Should brands be allowed to have Facebook profiles?

Recently, I have also been doing some social networking in an “unofficial” capacity as a representative of one of our brands, Wrox. Primarily this experimentation is on a Wrox Facebook Group I started, and in a Wrox Twitter feed. These identities are Wrox branded, and the conversations I have are Wrox-centric. So far the growth rate of followers/members is slow, but it is picking up. I have to say that I am pleased with the results in such a short period of time as I have been able to make connections to some programmers I might not have been able to reach as easily otherwise, and it looks like I may have found some new authors and technical editors.

At some point, we will figure out what the message is we want to send to Wrox readers via these channels, but for now the important thing is that we are a part of the conversation.

I like to think that I am keeping my personal brand and my company’s brand separate, but since I am discussing both here that might not be entirely true. There is certainly often a far amount of overlap between the two, and I am not “hiding” the fact that I participate in conversations as the Wrox brand. I certainly represent the brand often at trade shows, and in conversations with partners, customers and authors.

But I wonder if keeping the social application identities separate is the right thing to do. Robert Scoble didn’t really try to do that – he is just Scobleizer. On the other hand, I don’t represent my company on this blog, my personal Twitter feed, or my Facebook Profile.

So, I wonder – is having both disingenuous, or do each serve a purpose? What do you think?

If your blog is only relevant to a few close friends, and your website is only a big advertisement for your writing, why should strangers bother visiting either, let alone link to you? Your main goal, if you want people to discover you, is to entertain and inform them. Your Internet presence isn’t about what you have to sell. It’s what you have to offer, usually for free.

What are you offering? What on your website will make a surfer stay for longer than ten minutes? What on your blog will make it relevant in five years? Just being a published writer isn’t enough. Nobody cares that you’re published. Nobody cares that you have a book for sale.

Knorath makes the point that writing a book is only the first of many steps to success, and goes on to give some very practical advice on promoting yourself as a brand, and building the increasingly important absolutely critical Author Platform we publishers keep talking about.

Guess what? Your three sample chapters and two paragraph author bio aren’t enough to keep the average surfer interested for more than a few minutes, if they even find your site.

The article wraps with great advice on spreading your brand online and in real life.  This is a recommended read for current writers and aspiring authors.

Photo credit Xave Ignacio