I don’t know who’s managing the District 9 twitter marketing campaign, but their abuse of twitter (via their creation of Twam – “twitter spam”) just caused me to decide not to go see the movie tonight.  Here’s the history of the experience.

On August 15th, I tweeted “has anyone seen District 9?  Worth it?”  I got a handful of generally positive responses including one that said "@bfeld district 9 was very good.  stylistically a bit reminiscent of 28 Days Later.  well done  and entertaining.  also, go see hurt locker.”  I didn’t recognize the handle of the person that tweeted it to me but I noticed it since it was more descriptive than others.

Over the past three days I’ve now gotten over 20 tweets from people I don’t recognize that say exactly the same thing.  For example, I just got one from Joanne ODonnell (apedvatu).  I don’t know Joanne (if she even exists) and her twitter account is garbage. 

Or how about the tweet from Dominique Arnold.  Exactly the same text.  Same drill – no clue who Dominique is and her tweets are a bunch of district 9 crap.

This is classic marketing spam.  No different than all the email garbage we get every day (that a whole industry has been created to deal with).  To date, Twitter has done a great job of dealing with twam but it’ll logically get worse, especially now that all you need to be a “social media consultant” is a twitter account. 

As I was writing this, I saw a tweet pop up on a TechCrunch article titled “You’re Doing It Wrong Part 348: Complete And Utter PR FAIL”  I think the dynamics around social media marketing are now going to get a lot worse now before it settles down.

Guess I’m going to see Julie & Julia tonight instead of District 9.  Amy told me that District 9 looks too scary for me anyway.

I heard the line “it’s all about the faces” from someone in the past few weeks.  The line stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.  Last night I tried an experiment and changed my twitter avatar to a graphic done by Anthony Dimitre, a really talented local designer.  While there was plenty of positive feedback, there was also a lot of “I don’t like it” feedback, including the tweet “i think the avatar makes you seem less accessible than a normal pic” from @joshpayne. 

While I like the avatar that Anthony made for me, Josh’s comment rang true and I changed the avatar back to the photo I’ve been using. Now, I might need a new photo (or a new face for that matter), but that’s a different issue.  When I think about my experience on the web, there is no question that photos make people feel more real and accessible.

When I got my iPhone, I started taking quick pictures of my friends and family and adding these pictures to their contact record.  These photos got synced with Outlook and ended up in the top right corner of my emails from these folks (in addition to showing up on my phone whenever they called me.)  This was cool, but it forced me to take pictures of people and go through a convoluted UI experience to get the pictures associated with their contact record.

Even though this was a lot of extra work, the power of the photo matters.  I’m happier when I see Amy’s picture pop up on my phone.  Or, when my partner Jason calls me, I remember our great dinner at Uchi in Austin a few months ago (his photo was taken in front of the sign late at night.)  When I ponder the rise of Facebook and Twitter, and reflect on the early coolness of MyBlogLog, the power of the photo seems very real.

This hit home with me during the most recent two week iteration for Gist.  I get the new features between one and two weeks before everyone else (they do a release every two weeks) and there’s been an awesome new one that has appeared.  If a contact record appears without a photo (I guess II should call it an avatar), I have a chance to add a new image from a Google search.  Suddenly, between the data Gist imports from Facebook, Twitter, and the photos it is finding for me on the web, many of my most recently used contacts have photos that appear whenever I interact with them.  I have a real, positive emotional response to this.

Now, this data isn’t yet syncing back with my email contact list, so I’m only seeing it when I either go into Gist or open up the Gist Dossier in Outlook.  That just makes it even more noticeable that it’s missing from within my inbox (which is my most actively used form of communication.)  But – that’s just a matter of time.

As the social web continues its extraordinary growth, “faces” seem to be a small, but critically important part of it.

As I wander around in my own little virtual universe, I lovingly look for all the ways the various content I create gets wired together.  I have a twitter account, a blog (well – several), and am using Intense Debate for my comment system of my blog.

The Intense Debate guys just did a neat integration with Twitter.  I had already put my Twitter name (bfeld) into the Intense Debate profile information.  Now – my most recent tweet shows up when you mouse over my picture on an Intense Debate comment. 

You can also go directly to my blog, Facebook, profile, Linkedin profile, and Twitter account.  Now any comments I leave a on a blog using Intense Debate is subtly getting wired into my social network.

Next up – look for Lijit to start indexing this data also (hint to the gang on the third floor of 1050 Walnut.)

Now that I use 267 different social networking tools, I’m confused.  I’ve got so many different "friends", but I don’t know how to differentiate between them.

My "friend" Dave Nolastnamesogoogledoesntindexme recently asked me if I have seen any moves toward private hierarchies of relationships.  Specifically he (and I) want to categorize my "friends" into a hierarchy that I get to create.  One example set might be (lover, buddy, friend, acquaintances, met once, jackass, enemy).  This "friend set" should be user customizable and private.

My head starts to hurt when I think about this across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, Outlook, Gmail, Bebo, Dogster, Shelfari, …)  What a mess.

While I’d love a consolidation layer across all my social network (e.g. I want "one Dave Nolastnamesogoogledoesntindexme object"), I know I’m not going to get that anytime soon.  So – I’ll just settle for being able to create my own special unique proprietary private "friend hierarchy" within each social network tool.

Facebook.  MySpace.  LinkedIn.  Plaxo.  Gmail.  Email Contacts.  Bebo.  Every individual social networking software product that I use (Dogster, Shelfari, …)

Oh how I friend thee.  Let me count the ways.

I’m already seeing "predictions for 2008" that it will be the year of "friend consolidation."  How exciting.

Phase 1 (of at least 10) is starting to appear.  You can now see your LinkedIn data inside of Facebook (but you can’t really do much with it – yet.)  And of course this isn’t an "official LinkedIn app – just something someone else put together.)  Or – using Fuser – you can now see your MySpace data inside of Facebook.  Again – you can’t do much with it.

The dynamics this time around are pretty interesting to me.  Usually data follows apps.  This time the apps are following the data.  And the data is proliferating very quickly.  While OpenSocial theoretically "solves" this, we know that there are at least 9 phases to go before we get to a happy place with this.

Tristan Louis nails it in his post Personal Relationship Manager.  I think the only thing he missed are blog comments.  Too bad PRM stands for the now mostly defunct "Partner Relationship Management" category.