Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Why I unfollowed nearly everyone on Twitter

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First, I apologize that this post is off-topic. But some who follow me on Twitter may notice that I unfollowed nearly everyone and might be curious as to why I did it. The following is my explanation.

With the goal of being polite, I had the policy of following back anyone who followed me on Twitter. Exceptions were made for accounts that were overtly pornographic; these I did not follow.

What I am finding is that by following over 46,000 people, my Twitter timeline had become useless to me. It was physically impossible to read all the Tweets that appear in my timeline. I ended up avoiding my timeline because it was overwhelming. It was like drinking from a fire hose (to use the well-worn image).

The second issue is that even though I had some selectivity in who I followed back, Images that I consider pornographic kept popping up in my timeline. I did not do a good job of screening those who I followed back because it takes too much time to do so. I was getting on average 100 new followers a day and I don’t have time to examine each follower closely.

I considered unfollowing select accounts, but to do that I have to view the images in order to unfollow the one who posted them. This is not something that I want to do. It is also a very time-consuming process.

So while running the risk of alienating many or all of my followers, I decided to do a mass unfollow and only follow a small number of accounts that will be helpful for me to get news, information, and encouragement.

The way it is currently configured for me, Twitter has ceased to be a communication tool. The only reason to continue on the trajectory that I am currently on would be to brag about the number of followers I have. Bragging about this number has not been something that I care to do.

I anticipate that many or most of the people that follow me did so because they assumed that I would follow back. If I unfollow them, I am likely to get unfollowed in return.

If you are offended by my unfollow and feel you need to unfollow me back, I understand. I’m OK with that.

Disqus Update – Why I’m Back

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June 2017 Update: Anyone who had followed this blog for a while and pays attention to the comment system will see that I have been rather indecisive with regard to which system to use. I have tried nearly all of them. When I was focused on page load speed, I went with the native WordPress comment system. When I was focused on improving interaction, I gravitated back to Disqus. For the time being I’m back with Disqus.
Disqus

You may notice that the Disqus comment system is back on this blog. The bottom line is that Disqus just works and I will spend less effort around moderating spam comments. If there is a slight penalty in page load speed, then I will live with it. I tried the native WordPress comment system and was flooded with spam. I added Spam Free WordPress and got no spam but then it was more difficult for humans to comment. I tried IntenseDebate and it seemed to struggle to integrate with other WordPress tools and I would be notified of comments that I could not find within IntenseDebate. So after wandering around in the comment system wilderness, I’m back with Disqus. Any Comments?

Why I switched from Bufferapp to Timely for Tweet buffering

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Update – 2/21/2013

With the demise of Timely, I am now using Hootsuite for my update scheduling. Hootsuite now has an “auto scheduling” function which is very handy. There are two downsides to Hootsuite. First, using the auto feature, there is no way to control the time of the tweets or the number of tweets scheduled per day. The second downside is that there is no option to using bit.ly as the URL shortener. The only choice is to use the owl.ly functionality built into Hootsuite. Neither of these two issues are deal breakers for me.

Original Post

Timely Tweet Buffering

I had been using Bufferapp for Tweet buffering for a long while. Recently I discovered a similar service called Timely. Both of these apps provide a buffer for spacing out Tweets. When I am looking at RSS feeds or catching up on email I often find links that I’d like to share. The beauty of Buffer or Timely is that instead of bombarding my followers with a bunch of tweets all in a row, I can put them into a buffer that sends them out at a specified interval.

Both of these services have a premium edition where additional features are available for a monthly fee. My comparison is for the free services only. If you are willing to pay for the premium services, you can make your own comparison. If you do, feel free to post your conclusions or observations in a comment below.

Here are the four reasons why I made the switch:

  • Timely allows unlimited Tweets in the buffer whereas Bufferapp limits the buffer to 10 Tweets.
  • Timely allows for multiple accounts and interfaces with Facebook well.
  • Timely gives you the option of posting to any or all of the accounts at the same time.
  • Timely sends me a concise weekly email summary of my activity and the performance of the tweets.

Both of these services have widgets that make it easy to use the service from within the browser of your choice. I use Chrome as my primary browser and the widgets for both services work equally well with Chrome.

To be fair, I should point out the one advantage of Bufferapp. That is that the service allows you to schedule the times of the Tweets whereas Timely only allows me to specify the number of Tweets per day.

Also with Bufferapp, if you refer friends to the service you can earn additional capacity in the Tweet buffer. But this is nullified by the fact that Timely does not have a limit.

Both services work well but because of the three items mentioned above I have a slight preference at this time for Timely.

What do you think? Are there any other buffering services I should try?

 

4 Reasons Why I Dropped Disqus Comment System From My Blog

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DisqusAfter about 3 minutes of internet research on the subject, I decided to no longer use the Disqus comment system on this blog. I had no serious problems with Disqus. The service was free and it worked well. Yet, I found some reasons to turn off Disqus and I think they are strong enough to warrant keeping it turned off. In fact, I have deleted the plugin and do not plan on re-installing it.

Here are the reasons why I think uninstalling Disqus was a good move:

  1. It drastically improved my page load speed. I’m not a technical wizard, but I guess it is because using the comments system inside WordPress allows the comment system to be cached along with the post. (Any tech guru’s who have a better explanation can chime in with a comment as to why it got faster)
  2. The native Worpress comment system works better with the the WPTouch plugin. When using a touch screen device, the count is superimposed on the little calendar page icon within the WPTouch theme. This helps me keep track of comments and respond or spam them accordingly. Disqus would email me, but the functionality built into WPTouch makes it much easier to track on my mobile device using the native WordPress comment system.
  3. The WordPress Checker Extension in Chrome works better with WordPress than with Disqus. Since Chrome is my primary browser, this helps me keep better track of comments.
  4. The WordPress comment functionality seems to work adequately and I don’t think I’m missing any benefits.

Feel free to comment about how to make the comment experience better for readers. I’d love to hear any ideas.

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