Yesterday Shelby wrote “Reaching my social media limit & the day I was kicked off Twitter” and my original plan was to write a very snarky response. I mean, come on folks. Clearly she has a Twitter problem and needs an intervention. Oh wait. She hit her Twitter limit because she is my co-host of #shehechat each Thursday evening at 8 p.m. CST. And I’m telling you, in the last two weeks our chat has been on fire. It’s so on fire I can’t even keep up with the stream.
Sometimes hitting limits is a badge of honor
When you hit limits on a network like Twitter the way Shelby did one week ago today, I’d say you should be nothing but damn proud of yourself. The limits are really in place for people trying to hack the system and spam folks like you and me. Shelby was spreading good and useful content to a community that we have helped build over the last year and a half. Afterwards, she headed over to another chat to participate and contribute.
The problem is “you’ve been banned” badges are not the ones any of us want to win. It’s a tricky situation for folks like you and me who are using Twitter for all the right reasons. It’s a tricky dilemma for Twitter, which is trying to manage our desire to use Twitter for good and keeping the spammers off.
The case for your own home base
So here’s the part of the post where I get up on my soapbox. Shelby had no control over being taken offline by Twitter last week. But – and this part is important – this site never went down. The difference of course is that this site is owned and controlled by us. We make the rules here; not Twitter, or Facebook or LinkedIn. When we want to blog, we blog. When you want to comment, you comment. And for the most part, we don’t moderate or limit comments in any way.
Twitter, however, is a tad bit bigger than SheHeMedia.com. As such, it has to deal with spammers and hackers on a much greater scale. That’s why the rules are in place. By making sure you have your own site that is owned and controlled by you, the prospect of losing your internet voice is greatly diminished. If, on the other hand, the only presence you have on the internet is your Twitter or Facebook page, your internet presence is at the whim and the fancy of the folks who own and manage those networks.
Wrapping it up with some fun
Let’s circle back to Shelby for a second. Her post yesterday highlighted three things about her I already know:
- She does not like being seen as a rule breaker (that’s why I call her Marcia Brady).
- She sure does have a lot of her own rules to support point #1 above.
- She’s got a Twitter problem and we need to organize an intervention.
And now it’s your turn. What items would you add to my Shelby list? But seriously, what’s your plan B for social media limits?
