Guy Kawasaki – defensive about Twitter spam?

February 11, 2009 by Dave Earley
Filed under SMO, Social Networking

Darryl King of web development company ireckon conducted an experiment three weeks ago. He publicly tweeted that he was unfollowing Guy Kawasaki because of his spammy Twitter activity.
Specifically, Darryl King said:

“i removed my follow of @guykawasaki as it just seemed to be twitter spam not a conversation.”

Guy obviously tracks his mentions because within five minutes he replied to Darryl.
You can read the exchange here, and see a screengrab below, but basically Guy didn’t seem to take it to well, for a guy with over 50,000 followers at the time. 21 days later and Guy Kawasaki now has 62,000 followers on Twitter.
$Guy Kawasaki doesn\'t like his tweets being described as Twitter spam$

I bring it up, because again Guy Kawasaki is being accused of Twitter spam. This time by UK/Europe TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher who, obviously not holding back, told Guy “you have nothing to say”.
$UK TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher says Guy Kawasaki has nothing to add to Twitter because he can\'t converse.$

A search of @guykawasaki spam or guy kawasaki spam shows a little of what some people are thinking about Guy and his Alltop content in Twitter.
I assume in this post that most people know what Twitter is. Guy Kawasaki was accused of Twitter spam because many of the links being posted in his ‘personal’ twitter account were not in fact posted by him.
They are a collection of links, automatically posted in many cases. You can read Guy Kawasaki’s Twitter strategy here in a Paddy Donnelly interview, and also on his blog, Guy Kawasaki: How to Use Twitter as a Twool.
Guy obviously believes in the validity of that strategy, recently suggesting four pages of just his links represented better value than four pages of personal updates from other Twitter users, in a response to Twitter user Jason Aten. Again, Guy seems to get very defensive about his Twitter strategy being described as spamming.
It also presents an interesting situation where Twitter founder Biz Stone is said to have suggested one way of monetising the platform could be to charge brands for “commercial accounts”. That link raced around Twitter, and I questioned at what point individuals like Stephen Fry or Darren Rowse get tagged as brands in Twitter. All the speculation prompted a reply from Biz Stone on the Twitter blog saying Twitter will remain free.
Guy Kawasaki is one who, clearly, believes the @guykawasaki Twitter account is business, not personal. As such, would he qualify as a “brand”? Again, in responding to TechCrunch UK/Europe editor Mike Butcher, you can see Guy fills his feed with commercial links “Because there is no business model for strictly wit and insight. Twitter is a work, not a diversion.”
For Guy Kawasaki, Twitter is strictly business

This entire post came as a result of seeing Mike Butcher’s tweet asking why Guy Kawasaki did not let the @guykawasaki account simply express his wit and insight.
I unfollowed Guy Kawasaki on Twitter a week or two ago. That’s cool. Following him was my choice, as was unfollowing him.

If you follow me on Twitter, and ever think what I put out is spam, or unwanted, let me know. I claim to Twitter about online journalism and new media, but there’s a lot of blather thrown in as well, for example “Arise, and hie thee to #btub coffee! On my way there now”.
Not groundbreaking.