If you're a tweeter and a teacher (or a Tweacher) and active on Twitter, you're probably used to seeing lists of recommended contacts fly across your Tweetdeck on Tuesdays and Fridays (and possibly before and after those days as the different timezones conspire to make an average Twitter day last about 48 hours). In fact, it can look like your humble Twitter abode is being suddenly overrun by a furious army of friendly, well-meaning ants!
These are part of the cute little #teachertuesday and #followfriday hashtag applications that allow people to add to an ongoing searchable reference list on Twitter and comprise a way of giving people ideas about who else to follow.
In theory they are a good idea, but (to me) there's little doubt they've gotten out of hand and been overused to the point that they're close to useless. To give you an example, here's what my Tweetdeck looked like at one stage today:
Now, those are people who have included me in their #teachertuesday referencing. It's a nice gesture (if you're one of the people there, thanks!), and for a while there I was as guilty of it as anyone else - mainly out of a sense of obligation. These recommendations are problematic (and spilling over into "binge" status in my opinion) because:
1. When someone recommends you for #teachertuesday or #followfriday, you feel like you should be doing the same back (or else risk feeling a bit like a shmuck);
2. When you start recommending people, you inevitably end up leaving other good contacts out, so you do more of these posts to include as many of your good Twitter buddies as possible (again, or risk feeling like a shmuck);
3. Everybody starts thanking everybody for putting them in their #teachertuesday and #followfriday lists, which clutters up the Twitter intray even more;
4. Essentially #teachertuesday and #followfriday are basically the same thing - a combination of introducing new contacts to people and "mutual grooming", so why do we have two of these days instead of just one? Because it makes a nice schedule across the week with two times to start plugging each other rotten?
The end result for me (I don't know about you) is that I very rarely check out or follow anyone that appears on these lists. I mean, look at them - it's a big mess of names with rarely more than a very flimsy context. These 48-hour Tuesdays and Fridays become a time for me when I politely pass over all these posts (which tend to come thick and fast) and search a little harder for something juicy to read. I used to take part in the habit, too (out of politeness - but figuring that everyone else would be skimming over them, too).
Think about it: It's like being at a teacher conference and every couple of hours everyone starts yelling out who all their friends are, en mass, and then thanking each other for doing so, en mass. Reckon there's time for a handshake and smile in that kind of potential imbroglio? Like in anything, en mass quickly becomes just a mess.
Well, in the end Shelly Terrell's example put me onto a way to make this sort of thing a little more meaningful and genuine, by only recommending one person at a time with one of these hashtags and giving some information about why she was recommending that person in particular. This gave me some context for potential people to follow, and I do actually follow a lot more people through this sort of recommendation. Names and what they do and why they should be followed get completely lost in mass lists, but Shelly's way was helpful and I started to follow her example. It put the humanity and relevance back into this sort of practice!
Still, we have the problem of clutter - way too much coming across the Tweetdeck during two days of the week, essentially doing the same thing: scratching each other's backs.
Well, I can't say I have any majorly brilliant idea on how to handle or fix these behavioural peculiarities in Twitter. Hopefully you'll add some ideas of your own in the comments section below, but for now here's what I think:
1. We all agree that #teachertuesday and #followfriday means no obligation (and no resulting shmuckness) to recommend everybody who recommends you, and no obligation to recommend every Tom, Dick and Haarkon (thanks, Ken Wilson!) on your contacts list!
2. We clearly differentiate #teachertuesday and #followfriday in some way. For example, we reserve #teachertuesday for teachers that have really been inspiring us as teachers with their work or advice or whatever (and we keep it to say 3-4? on any given #teachertuesday, and try to avoid re-mentioning the same people we mentioned last week?), and we dedicate #followfriday to recommending people who give us the best stream of resources and links (and hence are really useful for other people to follow as well, but again - with a limit of 3-4 that weren't featured last week?).
I'm not sure how viable or attractive these options are, but they would help to put some more meaning into these days of recommendations, and reduce the overall clutter at the same time.
But if you're like me and don't tend to follow anyone new as a result of these mass listings and re-listings, we have to acknowledge that it's a time-wasting and slightly innane activity on our part and find some better way of handling it all!
Got any ideas? Do share!
:-D
See some of my other blog posts relevant to being a teacher and using Twitter:
Twitter for teachers - why you should start tweeting!
How Twitter can improve your blog visitation!
Twitter: how receptive are you and your tweet-friends?
