nthWORD Shorts

It's been a week since we began using Hootsuite for Twitter and I have to say it's been a game changer. Before Hootsuite, I was tweeting 1-3 times a day--if that--mostly RTs or sharing information that might be interesting to our audience. But something about the interface really bugged me. To put it bluntly, having to click from the homepage to the direct messages page to the mentions page to the followers page to the following page annoyed the shit out of me. It's like driving a cargo van down the highway without any mirrors. Bottom line: Too much clicking.

With Hootsuite, thankfully, you've got a rearview and side view mirrors and gauges you can easily read. You can see your list feeds, mentions, inbox, and in a one click pop-up you can see your profile, including followers, following and more. But more importantly, you can schedule your tweets in advance, as many as you'd like, keeping you relevant in the immensely large pandemonium of 140-character tweets. In less than a week, we gained 35+ new followers, and lost a handful too, but that's about average.

So what does this have to do with David Foster Wallace? Now that I'm up to speed on Twitter, I'm implementing a purge. During said purge I fell sucker to a tweet from Michael Hyatt. I didn't recognize the name and had no idea when or why I added him to our publishing list since I don't particularly have any interest in all things "labeled" Christian. But one of his recent tweets did catch my attention. What can I say, except that at times I can be a narcissist, at other times a fool?

@MichaelHyatt: What famous writer do you write like? Find out with this statistical analysis tool. Fascinating: http://iwl.me/

The link brought me to I Write Like, a web page with no 'about' section, just the following:

Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.
Any text in English will do: your latest blog post, journal entry, comment, chapter of your unfinished book, etc. For reliable results paste at least a few paragraphs (not tweets).
Paste your text here: [insert large text box]

Tempted, I vainly opened my stories folder, copied a paragraph of text and entered it into the Robot. My results: that I write like David Foster Wallace. Interesting. I've only read one of his books, Broom of the System, which, despite its intellectual playfulness, I didn't like. Test two, I copied another paragraph of text from a story with a completely different style. Results, that I write like David Foster Wallace. Ok. In my final attempt, I entered a paragraph of text from a random blog I found on the Internet. Results, that I write like David Foster Wallace.

Each time, below the results came the following ad:

"I have personally read through thousands of book proposals in my career as a publisher and agent. I know what these professionals are looking for—and what they are not looking for."

— Michael Hyatt, Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Thanks, Michael. You got three free ads in front of my face. Now I will purge you from my list and avoid your online persona ad infinitum.

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Labels: David Foster Wallace, Hootsuite, marketing scam, Michael Hyatt, publishing, Twitter

Thursday, July 15, 2010

I Write Like... A Robot - Statistical Bull Shit Machine

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