Just the FAQs
General
Q. How can you follow so many people?
A. I only deal with @s, Directs, and searches for the strings "guykawasaki" and "alltop." I used to auto-follow everyone who followed me, but found that I was getting inundated with Direct spam. I am not reading everything everyone I follow tweets, but I answer almost every @ and Direct.
Q. What is @GuysReplies?
A. I created this account to reply to @s because all my followers do not need to see every @ reply that I post. For example, when people tweet, "@guykawasaki I loved Reality Check," I don't want to burden everyone with my thank-you @ reply. Also, people publicly attack me as a kind of "tweet bait" to get more followers. Because @GuysReplies has few followers, this scheme won't work, and I can still appear to be "engaged" with the loser.
Ghostwriters
Q. Do you use ghostwriters?
A. Yes, four people contribute to my tweets: Annie Colbert, Gina Ruiz, Noelle Chun, and Neenz Faleafine. (Here is a picture of Annie, and here is a picture of Gina.) This is why you will see the initials "AC, "GR," "NC," and "LF" at the end of some tweets. If there are no initials, then it's me. I use ghostwriters because I want to provide as many interesting links as possible. I measure the quality of my links (and that's what matters most to me) by how many times people retweet me. One objective measure of retweets is here.
Q. Do your ghosts respond to @s and Directs for you?
A. No, they only tweet links to interesting sites and blogs. They never respond for me or as me.
Q. Why did you hide your use of ghostwriters?
A. I've never hidden this fact. As soon as I started it, I disclosed it (way back in January, 2009) here.
Q. How can I see only tweets from you and not from your ghostwriters?
A. You are making a mistake because they find great stuff, but try this search:
Q. Why do some people attack you so much for this?
A. Most are angry, little "SEO experts" who cannot generate content, so they need to generate controversy in order to drive traffic to their blogs or get other angry, little people to follow them on Twitter.
Adjix Links
Q. Are you trying to make money by using Adjix?
A. No, none of my Adjix links in tweets have ads.
Q. Then why do you use Adjix?
A. Three reasons: (1) it is a convenient button in Firefox and Safari; (2) I can schedule tweets ahead of time; (3) Adjix provides statistics about the popularity of each link.
Q. Are you an Adjix stockholder or investor?
A. No.
Alltop
Q. Why do "all" your tweets promote Alltop?
A. It may seem like it, but "all" my tweets do not promote Alltop any more than public television is “always” conducting a fundraising telethon. Look at this if you don't believe me.
Q. Okay, but what if I don't want to see any Alltop promotions?
A. UFM (unfollow me).
Comments (7)
I guess I just need to get over it and UFFM. Un**FollowMe. Any chance you would put your Ghosts out to pasture?
Still your fan,
@jmacofearth
www.uber.la
To the issue of your main point above -
" I use ghostwriters because I want to provide as many interesting links as possible. I measure the quality of my links (and that's what matters most to me) here:
http://retweetist.com/users "
The Guy Kawasaki brand--to ME--never seemed to be about cumulative, random, interesting-to-someone content ranging from cute pet pictures to what Wayne Gretzky is up to today. Your brand was about practical, no-nonsense, pithy understanding of technology leverage in business and the interface between the personal/social and that technology--for life, for growth, etc. Personally, I think you do damage to your brand with your race to throw kitchen-sink links into the twitterscape.
Perhaps you need more than one Twitter account? --because I'd LOVE to follow--religiously--the Guy who amonished to put no more than 10 words on a PPT slide, who wrote the Art of the Start, etc. without the rest of the Variety Page links tossed into the mix. Perhaps there's some startup who can automate these searches you kindly provide above?
A fan-- always--
Mike
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