

An idea to get Michael Arrington's attention on twitter. - amichail

I'm thinking of building a service to get the attention of famous people on twitter.<p>It works like this:<p>You go to my service to post a public twitter message to say @TechCrunch.<p>The service would embed a url for @TechCrunch's inbox in my service.<p>Example: @TechCrunch, check out my cool idea! http://url_for_@TechCrunch's_inbox_with_this_message_highlighted<p>You can click on the embedded url to upvote/downvote the message for @TechCrunch.  I could even have reddit-like comments discussing the merits of replying to a message.<p>When @TechCrunch looks at the message, he can click on the link to see how well it ranks in his inbox. He can also see who voted up/down.<p>At this point, @TechCrunch may be convinced to reply to the message or some other one ranked higher in his inbox.<p>If @TechCrunch agrees a lot with your votes about what is worth replying to, he may start following you on twitter.  And so this provides an incentive for people to help him sort out what's important in his inbox.
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aj
Why would you even want Michael Arrington's attention. You should want the
attention of real users, not a pseudo-celeb who only favors his friends.

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amichail
Don't you want to talk to famous people? How about having a policy discussion
with Barack Obama?

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alaskamiller
You betcha! But I would darn hope Obama talks to me about policies because of
my reputable expertise on such matters and not because I won American Idol.

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amichail
For the vast majority of people, chatting with Obama is not even remotely
possible. With this idea, it is but based on merit.

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alaskamiller
Let's not forget, American Idol is based on merit too. So we're in agreement,
there should be a version of American Idol with the prize of meeting Obama.

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unalone
Well said. I think that, rather than attempting to make a system for
attracting people's attention, it's better to try and learn to make
interesting, well-informed comments and messages. That way you end up getting
attention, but you do it the fair, honorable way, and everybody goes home
happy.

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threepwood
I like this idea, although maybe not as much as the chatbot game.

The problem has already been mentioned. If you're going to make something for
celebrities, it better be something that they are willing to pay for....and
this doesn't seem to meet that threshold.

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alaskamiller
Last time Arrington wrote a post about his email problem this was one of the
solutions -- applying some kind of Digg methodology to his incoming messages
-- suggested to alleviate his "problem" (I don't see how this is a problem
worth finding solutions for, he's an edge case).

Here's the rebuttal: 1) you need a varied enough audience that actually cared
enough about his life to sift through messages directed to him and 2) if you
could amass such an audience it becomes politically, or money-wise, prudent to
game it for your own benefit and 3) why would he trust audiences to judge or
to even read his messages?

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amichail
The idea is that people doing this would build a reputation so that Arrington
is more likely to follow them on Twitter.

So there's an incentive to do a good job here.

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alaskamiller
The more you say Arrington the more you peg this as an edge case.

That said, Arrington follows his existing friends or things he's interested
in. If you @ reply him he will read it but more than likely he won't respond
to it. That's two problems then, 1) trying to prove you can be his friend and
2) getting him to react. If you're trying to be his friend a Twitter-Digg app
is a pretty lame way of doing so. If you're trying to get him to react the
simplest way is to send him compelling content or proposition.

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amichail
Why is sorting out Arrington's inbox well a lame way of becoming his friend on
twitter?

BTW, another reason why you might upvote a message is because you would like
to see Arrington's reply (assuming he will reply to it in public).

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alaskamiller
The obvious privacy issues aside, that's pretty lame because you're not his
real friend, you just want him to write or do something for you. How is
moderating his messages going to establish some sort of friendship? That's
creepy. Is he friends with top Diggers?

And why is seeing someone reply to something even considered an incentive?

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amichail
I think it's an incentive in this forum. People sometimes vote up submissions
because they would like to see Paul Graham reply.

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alaskamiller
I don't believe that is, or was, ever the intent.

I could be wrong. Get a copy of pligg and drop in tweets and users and see
what happens.

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ram1024
i think it's an interesting idea. basically a public forum where everyone sees
the messages and rates them.

you should build this, i think if someone "famous" got enough
feedback/requests/traffic in "their" inbox they might bother looking to see
what the public has deemed important enough for them to waste time looking at.

or something :D

