This morning I decided to start un-following every Twitterer whose majority of tweets are crumbtrails announcing what they are doing now, but whose crumbtrailings do not intersect mine. My twiver has grown too thick with crumbs, and something must be done.
The question is, by whom? Is this a problem Twitter alone can solve? I suggest not.
What I’d like to do is set conditions that trigger following and unfollowing various Twitterers, expecially when we chance intersecting in meet space. I see two ways that can happen.
One is some kind of feature addition to Twitter and (in my case) Dopplr, allowing the latter to tell the former that I’m in the region of Twitterers whose crumbtrailings might interest me.
The other is to have my own dashboard and controls, independent of Twitter, Dopplr, Facebook or any other social (or travel) webservice provider. By that dashboard I could turn the crumbtrailings of others on or off, or set conditions that turn them on or off. That dashboard would manage my relationship with Twitter and other service providers, and connections between them on my behalf. A dashboard like this would be a good example of VRM at work.
What we want, methinks, is to give social webservice companies ways they can adapt to their users, rather than vice versa. This can only happen when users take the lead, rather than just follow.
As Joe Andrieu says, VRM is a vector, and that vector proceeds from the user.
Once we equip customers to lead vendors, the axe is pulled from our heads, and the walled garden becomes obsolete.
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