Remember the days of MySpace when folks promoting an event would send out bulletins every 15 minutes or so in hopes every one of their followers would see it? I'm sure there are some on Facebook that do something similar, say send out email reminders a but too frequently, but if they start abusing it you can just unfollow them.I was thinking about this because it seems the nature of online event promotion has shifted slightly. A few years ago you would spray reminders everywhere and anywhere you could, and everyone did. So much so that people just stopped paying attention to their social network's information streams.
Now it seems that while the general populace has broadened the number of online channels they communicate through they've simultaneously narrowed the focus of the their conversation through the selection of who they choose to include on those channels. In my case if someone is spamming Twitter outside a handful of reminders or flooding my Facebook in-box you can be sure I'll stop following them and mute their din. But you know what? That rarely happens, because these days I'm more careful about who I allow into my information stream and I assume you are too. Together we're cleaning up the net and streamlining conversations one "add" at a time.
Or am I crazy / overly-optimistic on this? Have you noticed a difference in event promotion amongst your social circle over the last couple of years?
primarily I get flooded on Facebook and like you, I will block it if it gets too excessive!
ReplyDeleteI think the nature of those reminders has changed, too. If you do this on FB, you see it in your Events stream as an automatic reminder and people see that you plan on attending, which could in turn lead them to attend, which gives you more of an impetus to go instead of blowing it off. Whereas the old way was just an email that didn't automatically get calender'ed in some way.
ReplyDeleteThere is a fine line to try to broach, and its always a different line for everyone. I try to tell clients to keep it to a minimum for these very reasons...
ReplyDelete