NashMash Adds Opt-Out Options

Today, the developers of NashMash over at 365 Creative have added a variety of opt-out options for people whose accounts end up on their list of Nashville area Twitter users. Among the options are: not being followed when the bulk follow is processed, not being included in the new randomizer that displays a Nashville Twitter profile at random, not being available to be the featured user of the day, and, lastly, not being included on the public list.

While this is a drastic improvement over the prior situation, I would much prefer to see this as an opt-in list rather than opt-out. This is especially true for accounts that are marked private and I hope that the developers will consider making at least this change. I do like the granularity in the opt-out choices, as they provide reasonable options for finding a comfortable level of participation.

Clearly, the developers are looking to retain as many people as possible on the list, but given the amount of ill will generated yesterday, I'm surprised that they haven't issued a more public statement. A simple post to the website explaining their intentions and apologizing for the inadvertent public launch of the service might go a long way to ensuring that people don't opt-out in droves. It might even gain them some support. Nonetheless, I do appreciate them providing information about the service to me and their willingness to post comments here.

What say you?

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NashMash Releases Frankentwitter on Unsuspecting Nashville Twitterverse

Late yesterday, local Nashville developer 365 Creative released a new Twitter mash-up that quickly generated strong reactions among Nashville users of the Twitter service. Dubbed NashMash, the service allows a Twitter user to follow all the users located in Nashville in one step. That's 1652 new contacts at last count. And countless updates added to the user's Twitter stream.

A few people who enjoy having lots of followers, or who like to follow a lot of people, have reacted positively. A large number of others have reacted with great disdain at the volume of new followers and the notices that come with them. I haven't talked with anyone who submitted their credentials to the service, but I've heard about some negative reactions to the resulting deluge of updates and text messages and frustration at not being better forewarned about what was going to happen to them. [UPDATE: Twitter user andi37206 used NashMash today and certainly had a strong reaction to the results.]

I've been told by one of the developers behind the service that they have stopped processing new requests for now. Once Twitter catches up with the follow requests in queue, we should see an end to the inundation of new followers and notices. I'm also told that the auto-follow feature was developed as a proof-of-concept for a separate commercial application that they envision for Twitter. (I should also note that this person was my source for suggesting the service be called Frankentwitter. Kudos to them for understanding that they released a monster and for having some self-deprecating humor about it.)

Before the service is restored, if it is restored, I would encourage the developers to add at least the following improvements:

1. Do NOT include protected accounts in the list of accounts that will be followed. (For the most part, these people are not interested in unknown followers, so why provoke them.)


2. Provide an easy mechanism for people to opt-out of being on the list of accounts to be followed. (Even better, make the list opt-in, as Dave Delaney has done with his Official Nashville Twitter List.)


3. Explain more clearly that by using the service you will be adding a very large number of accounts to your Twitter feed. (The current instructions aren't very clear on this point.)


4. Provide a mechanism to undo all the follow requests. (I don't know how this would even be possible, especially without un-following all of the people you were following before you bulk-added the others, but good luck to the person who wants to manually un-follow 1600 people.)


5. Do NOT initiate the follows with notifications turned on. (Oh, man, I can't imagine how many text messages are generated by 1652 Twitter users.)

Please add your suggestions and feedback in the comments.

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Color Wars Erupt on Twitter

At approximately 11:05 am CT yesterday, zefrank sent the following tweet:

Good Morning! As you can see, i am now a member of the blue team!

And then all hell broke loose. No one really seemed to know what was going on, but plenty of people wanted to avoid being left out. Teams started sprouting up in support of their favorite colors, or non-colors, or patterns of colors. Within 12 hours, at least 1,000 people had begun following at least one of the 30+ color teams and countless others were asking, "what's this color wars thing?"

Of course, zefrank provided only limited guidance, posting the occasional cryptic tweet throughout the day.

what team are you on? don't make up some imaginary team either...for God's sake the color wars are coming! 11:10 am

i'm losing track of teams - please make sure that your team has a @_____team- for example @blueteam 11:51 am

choose your team, make your badges (you don't have to wear them all the time - just when we start playing) today is "pick your team day" approx. 12:40 pm

ok.now lets be hush about the teams thing.lets put away our badges for the time being.color wars will start soon enough.back to normal :) approx. 2:40 pm

the first colorwar2008 scrimmages will begin in the next couple days...a crack team is working on it approx. 6:40 pm

By the end of the day, most people still didn't know what was really going on, and plenty of people had opted out altogether. Yet even some of the non-players didn't want to be left out and jumped on the noTeam and teamblack bandwagons. And then there were those, like Voltron, calling for peace and unity.

This morning, however, we awoke to a simple tweet from zefrank, linking to his blog post explaining the Color Wars as some kind of virtual recreation of games he played as a kid at summer camp. As word of the explanation spreads, the jury is still out on how popular the actual Color Wars might be, but at least for the first 18 hours or so, the lead-up swept the Twitterverse like a storm. Or, perhaps more fittingly, like a virus -- demonstrating the potential of Twitter for rapid, viral dissemination. As well as the potential for all of us to return to our middle school/junior high days given the right circumstances.

So which color team have you picked? Follow the action at colorwars.net (where this story is re-posted).

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