How to Fix the Live-Tweet / Spoiler Problem
Originally posted at rayhill.com. See the original post.
For those who want to experience a media event from a particular person's perspective, live-tweeting can be great. A fan of a TV show might enjoy reading along with the reactions of an actor from the show, a media personality they like, or even one of their friends. But unless steps are taken to manage one's message, live-tweeting can also be one of the worst violations of Wheaton's Law, pissing off all of your followers who don't like spoilers. The good news is that this is a fairly easy problem to fix, simply by using a parallel feed for live-tweeting events.
Why is live-tweeting such a bad idea?
Quite simply, unless your Twitter feed is specifically set up for live-tweeting, the odds are quite high that the majority of people who follow you do not want to read your live tweets. For anyone who is interested in the event you're covering but hasn't had a chance to watch it yet (either because it hasn't aired yet in their time zone, country, or online distribution platform, or because they simply don't have the time to schedule their life around live events), your need to live-tweet comes across as selfish and dick-ish, as it spoils their ability to experience it fresh for themselves when they do watch it. And for those who aren't interested in the event at all, your live-tweets essentially hijack your followers' feeds with useless crap, which again comes across as kind of a dick-ish move.
As an example, let's look at Syfy's live-tweets of Warehouse 13. As part of the marketing for the new season, Syfy had the characters from the show live-tweeting several episodes. Given that the network has dozens of shows and even more movies on their channel (and many of their followers are drawn to their Twitter feed for Craig Engler's great "how the business really works" tweets), we can safely assume that it is a relatively small subset of their total followers that are fans of any given show. Let's be generous and call it 25%.
Let's further assume that, with an international following, a relatively small percentage will have the opportunity (much less have the time) to watch the show when it airs live in the same time zone as the live-tweet. Some will watch a few hours later when it airs in their time zone, some will watch the next day when it airs online, and some will watch a week or more later when their personal schedule allows. Let's again be very generous and assume that 20% of the fans watch live.
That would mean that 70% of the Syfy Twitter feed's followers will be annoyed at the flood of tweets that are irrelevant to them, 25% will be seriously pissed off at having the show they love spoiled for them before they've had a chance to watch it, and only 5% will be happy to have been able to properly enjoy the live-tweet experience. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that providing a negative experience for 95% of your followers in order to provide a positive experience for only 5% is a bad move.
But what if I give advanced notice to mute/unfollow me before I start?
Typically, when the recently-spoiled masses chew out the live-tweeter for spoiling things for them, the live-tweeter's response is to point out that they did make a warning tweet before they started. Something like "we're going to be live-tweeting for the next hour, so if you don't want to be spoiled stay off Twitter or un-follow us for a while." Setting aside the inherent dick-ish-ness of saying, essentially "I'm going to do something I know is bad, so it's your responsibility to avoid it," this kind of warning tweet simply doesn't work.
Twitter is, after all, reverse-linear. Unless they spend the whole day constantly refreshing Twitter (yes, I know some do, but they're the minority, particularly outside desk job hours), people experience your Twitter feed in reverse order. So if you spend an hour live-tweeting a show they love, they won't see your warning tweet until after they've had to wade through an hour's worth of crap, and already had the joy sucked out of their viewing experience. And they can't simply skip your tweets, as they have to sift through them in order to see all the other tweets in their timeline that are interspersed with yours.
Live-tweeting on a non-dedicated Twitter feed is simply a bad thing to do. Please, please don't do it.
Ok, but some people LOVE live-tweeting. How do we make it work for them?
It is absolutely true that some people love live-tweeting. Some tweeters love doing it, and some followers love reading it. That's great! If everyone involved is enjoying it, more power to them. The trick is simply making your live-tweets opt-in rather than opt-out by doing them on a separate Twitter feed.
Let's return to the Syfy example. Instead of using the main @syfy feed to host live-tweet events, Syfy could create a separate @syfy_live feed. Whenever they want to host a live-tweet event, they could then use the main feed to let people know that they can follow the secondary feed to play along with the event. That way, anyone who wants to see the live-tweet content can easily follow the live feed and bask in the instant gratification, while anyone who doesn't want to be spoiled (or simply doesn't care to have their feed flooded) doesn't have to be inconvenienced.
This setup also has the benefit of allowing Syfy to better judge how many people are actively engaged with the live-tweet events, as they can watch the follower count for the live feed go up and down with each event, rather than having to guess what portion of the main feed's changes (positive or negative) are related to the live-tweeting. Using separate feeds for live events really is better for everyone involved.
Craig, on the off chance that you're reading this, please let me know when you decide to implement something like this. I love almost everything you do with the Syfy account, particularly the "how the industry works" educational tweets. I was very sad to have to unfollow to avoid the flood of spoilers, and I would really love to be able to follow again.
But can't people still be spoiled when the live-tweet feed gets re-tweeted?
Yes, of course. But if that happens, the sin that is committed is by the retweeter, not by you, and unless they retweeting you en masse, it's going to be a far, far smaller problem than live-tweeting on your main feed. We can't solve the problem universally without Twitter building filtering tools into their product (which, as an advertising company, they have little incentive to do). But we can at least minimize the problem as much as possible by putting some thought into how we use our primary Twitter feeds and when we move special content to secondary feeds.
Hmm. Wouldn't this work for other high-volume live events, too, like sporting events?
If we could convince sports fans to have separate feeds for their game-day tweets, that would be utterly fantastic! Seriously, I might cry from the pure joy of it. But there the number of sports fans who annoy their followers with this undecipherable (to the rest of us) gibrish is far larger than the number of people who live-tweet TV shows and other live media events, so I figure it's best to start with an easily solvable problem, and work our way up to the more daunting problems.
Besides, when was the last time you tried to get a sports fan to listen to logic regarding how they consume their sports? Especially while they're watching the game? Up. Hill. Battle. :-)