Twurler

In the fast growing universe that is Twitter, there are many different identities. Some twitterers are companies, promoting their products. Others are witty iconoclasts who have found the 140-character form as a canvas for their thoughts. There are those people out there who lead wonderful exciting lives and share their life with us, in an unselfish stream of tweets and pictures (usually uploaded as Twitpic links.) Then there are the lobbyists and advocacy organizations, directing us to their latest attempts at perception management on every issue. In the Twitter cosmos we follow, are followed, promote our favorites to those who follow us using #followfriday and the lovely, chaotic flow of messages shows up in Twitter clouds where the most used words grow and shrink as the world of tweeters move from hot topic to hot topic.

But, I have a personal peeve that ties into my irritation with news aggregators. You know, those websites that have no original content but only reproduce the intellectual property of others, linking and embedding but never contributing anything. I have gotten so many requests from website owners who ask, “Will you link to our site?” or “I’d like to promote my site on your list….  We have everything about a) climate change; b) biodiversity c) environmental policy.” But, when you go to the site, it is only a collection of links. And not even primary links, but links into the news articles written about events. So, these guys are so lazy that they are only linking to the media’s interpretation of the original content of others and not taking the time to actually even link to the original content.

My problem with news aggregators is not as profound as that felt by original content producers who happen to make their income off of the ads they serve from their sites. The aggregators are stealing food off of their plates, taking their intellectual property and re-selling it through aggregator-site ad revenues for content that they did not create. At least, on our site www.iisd.ca , we have used another revenue model that does not rely on ads (we fundraise for grants to support our services.)

But now, in the Twitter world, there are the 140 per message equivalent of the news aggregators. These are the people who use a variety of URL-shortening services to post links to other people’s content. I have coined the phrase “twurler” to refer to these denizens of the twiiterverse.

Yes, of course, I always appreciate it if someone RTs my messages and love it when my original content gets promoted through a tweeted link.

But, the Twurler is someone who does nothing but posts links to other people’s stuff. Nothing witty. No annotations (“www.iisd.ca best environmental policy info website”) No links to his or her own writings. No original thoughts. Just links to someone else’s intellectual property.

So, please excuse me if I unfollow your Twurling and don’t expect me to automatically follow you back, if I don’t see original content in your recent updates.

Oh, and of course you can always follow my own witty, original and sometimes provocative tweets at http://twitter.com/kimogoree