Karen Monroy

MOB-minding my own business.

‘To do list’: figuring out Face book Fan page. ( http://bit.ly/bk48Sx )How to request I be ‘fanned’ so I can appropriately let folks know about my work, writing, speaking etc.

Navigating around fan pages.

2 x4 WHAM! “Hitting Women.”

Advocating hitting women to “keep them in line” More violent dodo as I read on

Neanderthal. Yuck. Poo (quoting @amyoscar) energy.

Breathe. Prayer. Breathe.

What would you have me do God? What would you have me say? To whom?

4:00 pm app. Late. Time on hands

Is this a signal?

4:15 app rescheduled.

Neanderthal posts “It just a joke lady, get over it.”

Oh, yea. This is mine to do now. It’s clear.

Wait. I don’t know much ‘bout birthn’ no babies!

How isn’t up to me.

Twitter. I’ll tweet it.

Tweeted it 10 times and only about 12 hits on the link. Humm…..

Oh, I look for folks who are streaming live who ‘know me’. They’ll trust it’s real. I’ve earned their trust haven’t I?

Begin to @ anyone I know. Will they help report the page to take it down?

Someone mentions: what about the men? Why aren’t they tweeting?

Good call! I begin to reach out to men too!

Hour 1: 109 hits. Not happy.

get mention, “how long are you going to keep tweeting about this?”

My tweet,”In case you are wondering if I am going to tweet this all night? FUCK YES!!!”

Hour 1:15  258 hits. Who knew the F-bomb work like that?

(I must say I did receive, from dear twitter friends concerns about the F-bomb-they thought my page had been hijacked! Loved it)

End of hour 2: 776 hits and kerfuffle over. Page down.

WE WON! WE WON!

Cheers and thanks make the rounds on twitter! So many folks stepped up. So grateful.

Now I know what they mean when they say ‘twitter power’

Post Script:

The Neanderthal tried to put the page up two more times. #Failed

He’s resorting to hassling those who have complained-with emails about hitting women.

He’s learning FBI now.

Like I said, Neanderthal.

There’s a reason they died out.

Hey! Do me a favor and tweet this K?

Facebook Share?

Whatever works:-)Buttons below.

Thanks!

I believe I recently committed what some would call twitter heresy: I said the heck with numbers and purged my following list by 60%.

In essence what led me to this seemly drastic measure was I got clear on what I wanted to do with twitter. I got clear on what it wasn’t doing for me and what it could do, if I cleared the clutter.

Don’t think you have clutter in your list?

After spending a few weeks having a software developer and my assistant run some numbers for me I can tell you most likely somewhere between 40% and 80% of your list of followers are “crap”. I mean that in the nicest way of course.

Clearly with over 27 million users on twitter, it’s impossible to run data on the whole shebang. But us economists are well known for our theories and little testing of said, while us psychologists are well known for studying everything from the navel to the past lives. Where twitter was concerned a compromise was in order.

I found a way to Run data for a few individuals (beginning with experimenting with my account @KarenkmMonroy) to see how much clutter I actually had. I was a bit on the low side-33% (compared to the other test accounts) of which were spammers of one sort or another.

I have made the assumtion that spammers are problematic for everyone. There are various forms of spam, and I think studies I have read, had it all wrong, spam is the majority of the content–if you do the twitter equivalent of free love–follow everyone who follows you.

Before I go into some data I want to introduce the tool of discernment:

Our minds are not organized to quantify data we are unaccustomed to. Some examples:

An astronaut can appreciate the vastness of space differently than someone who’s never flown at all.

While everyone had some idea that the bail out recently completed by the United States Government was big, what kept the masses from taking to the streets: they didn’t qualitatively quantify the number in the bail out. It wasn’t about too big to fail; it was about too big to comprehend.

It’s the same problem a seeker has: the Universe is too big to comprehend so the temptation to believe one is separate from all that is –it’s immense.

No, I am not digressing, you’ll need this information, trust me.

Basically, what appears to be happening on the individual basis on both the following and follower side of twitter: the larger the numbers of folks who follow you, the higher percentage of crap. It’s the law of diminishing returns. And 10,000 seems to be the ‘magic’ number. Once over 10,000 your percentage of spam followers significantly increases. (if you are dying for the data contact me and I’ll send it to you, but I didn’t intend this to be a ’scientific’ paper so I’m not going to makes folks gag on the data)

My initial goal with twitter was to connect to other people who provided interesting (to me) content.  So I came up with the brilliant idea of following someone because folks  I followed like them too. I thought it would be a great idea, because some culling surely would have been done. Wrong.

Turns out there is plenty of “free-love’ and not much discernment on twitter.  You wouldn’t believe the numbers of porn, suspended accounts for suspicious behavior and spammy crap were in folks following list who clearly didn’t ‘roll’ that way. Why? It’s the old numbers thing: conventional wisdom says numbers are everything.

Spiritual Principal (and everything is spiritual-as everything is energy and form is just the container) informs us clutter is always undesirable. Is begins a ripple effect that leads to frustration andthwarts fulfillment.

So I had thousands of followers, but disconnected by the loud mouths tweeting, ” don’t pay for white teeth”, and “get more followers”, I decided to use a piece of software developed for specific traits of spammers. I un-followed about 60% of my following list.  One result of the mass un-follow was the drones, bots of all the spammers un-followed me back. But I had other very desirable results: I received the immediate information I was looking for—tweets I wanted. I could interact with others in ways I had not been able to previously, and have actually made some mutually supportive friendships that have bloomed outside twitter.

Is un-following twitter hearsay? It would seem so, but to me, no.

I wondered how I would follow folks moving forward after the purge. What kind of criteria could I set, and I wondered if others had the same problem-tons of crap following them and they in turn following back.

I asked the software developer if he could target some specifics for me on both sides of the follow and follower list. Yes, he could and we were in business. I picked a random sample to run numbers on. Now, when I say random I mean at the moment in time I need to give him names, these folks were on the tweeter feed, three of them I follow and three of them I do not.

@ ActuallyNPH @SarahPalinUSA @shellyKramer @skydiver @mashable @iconic88 @inspiremetoday

I began with this group and thought random testing should continue up until print time and it did. I ran numbers on 20 other twitter accounts. Regardless of how the users were chosen, their ‘crap’ following mirrored the above tests run on the initial group and ranged between 40-60%.

Exactly what do I mean by crap? Glad you asked.

If the folks who follow you did any of the below:

Try To Sell 24-7

Multiple @s

Nothing But Links

Tweeting The Same Links All The Time

Tweeting Identical Tweets All The Time

Now Absent

No Activity In Over A Month

Deleted Account

Not Active Yet (Fewer Than 10 Tweets)

Don’t Interact With Anyone

Hardly Follow Anyone

Mass followers and no tweets

Pointless babble

Allowing spam tweets to get more followers

Humans consistently overestimate the value of a thing, and are very poor at estimating the benefit.  This conundrum has been the bane of behavioral economists and psychologists.

On twitter this is how it translates with the illusion that high numbers are desirable or beneficial:

The clutter in your feed is thwarting solid connections in alignment with your interests. The benefits of twitter are limited, until you have a viable list with folks who read your tweets, and in turn you theirs. Test this for yourself: think of someone you want to communicate with on twitter. How do you ’see’ their tweets?

So you know that earlier  idea about not understanding the vastness of something, therefore you do not quite know how to perceive it to begin with? Escape that difficulty, by the specific application of the Principal of Intention.

Ask yourself what is your goal with twitter?

To be a time waster?

Distraction from your day?

To be sold stuff over and over?

To interact, mingle?

To find what interests you?

To explore, see what is out there?

Make contacts and meet folks you would not otherwise?

While I don’t have any twitter ‘rules’ for you, I can tell you the same Principals that apply to life apply here: The clearer you are on this list, the more enjoyment and benefit you will receive using twitter. Don’t fool yourself, there may be 27 million accounts on twitter-but if the numbers hold true 60- 75% of them are crap, and what is left is up to you to wade through.  Saying, “no” to everything is as big as mistake as saying ‘yes’ to everything.

Moving forward, I or one of my assistants will look at the home twitter page of anyone who follows me (I hope folks I follow do the same thing!) to have my list be a diverse group of folks who I want to hear from.

Since beginning this new way of following, quality over quantity, I have been asked to speak at some great events, met some beautiful folks, and been blessed in ways I know I don’t know yet. None of this would have been possible if I chased the numbers.

Naturally, I am going to encourage you to move beyond the vastness of cyberspace, your lack of ability to comprehend the dynamics of the unquantifiable, and commit to making everything you do, including twitter, something that blesses you and you it. Clarity, Clutter, Discernment and Intention. Use them and be blessed.

That’s my twitter story, and I am sticking to it.

Blessings,

Karen

Footnote: My purpose in studying other accounts on twitter at random had to do with seeing if the clutter situation was ‘just me’. I also have reviewed several other twitter studies, reporting amounts of “crap” being tweeted with ranges from 30-70 percent. Rather than to speak in  generalities about twitter traffic, I wanted to discuss the personal experience.