Cyber Means Pilot

Twitterkins lead me down another thought path when he tweeted me “who’d impersonate me when they’d gain nothing? Do identity thieves twitter? Like, to make it ‘look good?’” I really don’t have a good answer to this question. Also, I figured that this question deserved more than a simple 140 character answer. So, I figured I would poke this topic one more time to see where it leads.

I have to preface all of these statements by saying that Twitterkins is Paul F. Tompkins. He seems like a nice guy and technical whiz.

First, it’s pretty obvious that spam has appear in the Twitterverse and other microblogging communities. The question that comes to mind is why spam when the spammer has nothing to gain. Could it represent something viral? Could it make the spammer feel that they are control of the network by feeding it information or misinformation? Could it make the spammer feel that he or she lead the network to another source that could make the spammer money? Being a sociologist, I can not speak on motive. I can argue that it depends on the type of community, the information being shared and where the links used by the spammer take the community member.

Second, let’s approach the second question asked by Mr. Tompkins, “do identity thieves twitter?” I would focus on the term “identity thief.” According to the wikipedia, an identity thief is anybody that uses fraud to “stealing money or getting other benefits by pretending to be someone else.” So, yes there are identity thieves in the harmless sense on Twitter. I can interact (and have had conversations) with the characters from the West Wing, Studio 60 and Mad Men. I doubt that the actor or actress who plays those characters are typing the Twitter posts. The benefit to those playing the characters on Twitter is that they get to play the characters they see on television. Mr. Tompkins is a famous cable show and someone could want to “play” PFT. Others have done research on being a “fakester” by adapting another persona. I have not research on this subject nor read deeply this research. The question I have is “is somebody using Twitter for a more harmful purpose (stealing money from others, causing harm)?” I doubt it, but I can’t speak for certain.

I’ve been using Ping.fm for almost a month and what I noticed that the service allows me to form my thoughts without worrying about how it may fit into the structure of most of the social networking sites. However, there has been a backlash against the use of such a “megaphone” application like Ping.fm. The argument has been broken down into two separate prongs, but represent essentially the same issues. The problems have been referred to issues of redundancy and issues of context.

These new modes of modular distributed conversation are design to deliver the same message across many social networking sites. The problem of redundancy comes into play when user A follows creator B across the different sites. B uses Ping.fm to streamline their workflow or create continuity throughout their various profiles/avatars. A is annoyed that the same information is present whenever A looks up B status on the multitude of the social networks that B belongs or receives B’s status updates via email. Ping.fm has a solution to cross redundancy built into the system. A user can create “triggers” when addressing different audiences. I have the capability natively in Ping.fm to note a status change or an addition to my microblog or even if I want to write to my full blog. In addition to the native triggers, I can add a hashtags (#) followed by a trigger word to send my message to a few of my social networking profiles. The creator of the information should use custom triggers to selectively distribute their message.

The second argument presented in the issue of redundancy relates to the use of social network aggregators, such as Socialthing! and Friendfeed. The solution is sort of a two-step process. First of all, it is important to understand the flexibility of a tool such as Twitter or Pownce. Many can chose do use such tools as a public discourse, others can use it as a open method of interpersonal communication, still others can use it as  virtual “public academic,” or it can be use personal method of broadcast. Socialthing! or Friendfeed can not determine how individual user are using the tools. Therefore, someone using a network aggregator may need to change their preferences of individual user based on how that individual user is using the tools. A majority of the user will simply use each tool as an independent network, without linking the different profiles. Just to be clear, the two-step process is recognizing how others use the distributed conversation tools and setting preferences accordingly on social network aggregators.

This discussion of the use of the tools leads to the second prong, the issue of context. The contextual argument fits in between the semantics of context (words have meaning and concrete importance) and nature of the medium (it is a cool, lean-forward, dynamic media). Towards this argument, I would twist and turn my previous solution and present a two step solution to the creator. The first point would be remembering that there is a fine line between active posting and spamming. In this spirit, I would encourage those active post to be aware of the audience they are serving. They need to make sure that the information they are sharing is relevant to the overall community. Typically, the community gives feedback in one form or another (mu’s, tweet’s, et al). The second point for the creators of information to consider, especially to those who use distributed conversation applications, is to effectively use the tools that you have available. Twitter, Pownce and other sites must be used in such a way that it does not break the intent of the site..

In summary, I wanted to defend those who use Ping.fm as a way of express ideas. This is not intended to attack anybody. It is merely an attempt to explain how services like Ping.fm can help facilitate a healthy exchange of information among users.  Now if you excuse me, I’ve got to tweet about this.