To Blip Or Not To Blip? (That Is The Question)
Blip.fm is a music micro-blogging platform that works in a similar way to Twitter, except the content focuses completely on the sharing of music. Users search for and ‘blip’ their favourite tunes to their listeners, adding comments and lyrics, and give each other props for quality submissions.
The service also integrates directly with Twitter: if you link Blip.fm to your Twitter account (in the settings), each blip you make will automatically submit a Tweet to your Twitter timeline, including a link back to the song (via Blip.fm). This feature adds a neat little music note icon, too.
I use Blip.fm and like it a lot. There’s lots of great content on there and most of the time the service runs well. Like Twitter, they have periods of downtime, too, but they’re only a small operation (and relatively new start-up) and hopefully they’ll continue to get funding and grow.
The dilemma I’m having is whether linking Blip.fm to your Twitter account is a smart move. I’m actually wondering if it’s kinda rude.
Here’s the thing: when at home, I tend to listen to music (via my laptop) predominately on a Friday and/or Saturday night. From time to time, this may coincide with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages, and fairly heavy Twitter usage.
The problem is, at least for me, is that the frequency of blips tends to rise exponentially with the number of alcoholic beverages consumed. What this means is that whereas early in the night I might only blip 2-3 songs per hour, by the end of the night my Twitter contributions are generally all blips. And, to be honest, it doesn’t matter if alcohol is involved or not. If you’re listening to music, you’re listening to music. You tend to listen to a lot of it in a row.
I’m undecided whether this is something my followers like to see.
Put it this way: when I am privy to nothing but a string of blip Tweets from somebody I’m following, it can get a little irritating after a while.
So, this weekend I made the decision to unlink my Twitter account from Blip.fm. While I will still use the service, now all of my blips will focus on the community on Blip.fm, and not my Twitter connections. They’re two different animals and while I have some crossover it’s mostly limited to people I know offline.
(You can prevent Blip.fm from sending updates to Twitter by inserting an exclamation mark in front of your blip, but who remembers that after half a bottle of wine?)
I’m not convinced that anybody really cares about my blips, to be honest. Nor do I think that anyone apart from maybe a couple of people ever click on them. So, why link it to Twitter at all?
Maybe I’m looking at this cock-eyed, but I don’t think so. One thing that Twitter desperately needs is an easy way to filter out Tweets containing certain content. That way, we could all blip away to our heart’s content and if some of our followers didn’t want to see any of that stuff, they could chose not to. As it is now, you either have to put up or shut up.
(Note: You can use the filter option in TweetDeck to remove content. See the edit to this article below.)
And it’s not just Blip.fm; it would be nice to have this filter option for anything. And of course it won’t be long before all manner of external services give you the option to link up to Twitter: Friday nights could get pretty hellish. You don’t want to unfollow somebody just because they’re relaxing with a few tunes, but at the same time you shouldn’t have to be on the receiving end of all those blips, either.
One important thing to always be mindful about on Twitter is everybody on there is not on the same time zone. Happy hour in England could well be lunch hour in California.
Let me know in the comments how you feel about services like Blip.fm. Are you a member? Do you have your account linked to Twitter? Does it bother you when your followers submit lots of blips (to Twitter) in a row (or anything similar)?
EDIT: As mentioned above, it’s fairly easy to use the filter feature in TweetDeck to edit out any tweets contain references to blip.fm (or anything else, for that matter). Simply click on the ‘filter the tweets in this column’ button at the bottom of each pane, change the + tag to a -, and enter ‘blip.fm’ (minus the quotes) in the query box. Problem solved. You may have to repeat this for all your other panes, too, and naturally this will override any other filters you’d like to run.
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I like your philosophy on this one, but I’d be inclined in your case to keep the link between your blip.fm account and twitter*.
If ultimately I(or anyone else, for that matter) doesn’t want to be disturbed by various tweets, turning it off doesn’t seem to much effort, certainly less energy than grumbling about it, one man’s ‘spam’ is another’s insightful and/or fun posting.
*A bit of personal bias, I find some of the music you listen to be reasonably similar to some of my own personal tastes.
I agree in principle but I’ve tried to observe it how I feel (when others post strings of similar Tweets, not just Blip) and if it niggles me (which it can do) it’s bound to niggle others.
Anyone on my Blip friendlist will still see my stuff on there (and vice versa), which is how I think it should be, really. I mean, I don’t filter my Tweets back through Blip.fm (or Facebook or anywhere else). Same point, I feel.
(And yes, we do appear to have very similar tastes in music.
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I have a blip account but the MAJORITY of music I listen to is not hosted online, so I can only blip when I’m listening to a mainstream song. If there somehow becomes a way to ‘blip’ every song, regardless of whether or not it’s online, I will once again start using it…until then, not so much.
I think you have to be careful any time you use a service which automatically posts content via your Twitter account.
It all boils down to the expectations of your followers. I assume that most people follow me because I run a retro gaming blog and (mostly) talk about video games old and new. I do a fair bit of off-topic tweeting too, but that seems to be par for the course. That being so, I assume that people who follow me for my video game tweeting don’t really want to see what music I’m listening to. Most of them probably don’t share my exact tastes anyway, so it would just all be noise and very little signal.
Having said that, I listen to a lot of music and indulge in some music production myself, which is why I set up a second Twitter account especially for that purpose. The fact that there’s zero overlap between my gamer followers and my music followers tells me I made a wise choice not to combine the two.
Mileage will vary for others. If people start following you with at least some expectation that you’re going to be talking about music and sharing playing lists, then that’s fine. Hook Blip up to Twitter and go for it. But if your base of followers signed up for other reasons, it’s probably better to give it a miss.
@Ryan: Yes, there’s lots of stuff that doesn’t seem to make its way to Blip.fm, although I believe you can submit your own links if you know of any gems that have managed to escape the network.
@Mark: That pretty much is how I feel, too. I’m not sure exactly what my ‘place’ is on Twitter, yet, but in trying to build a reputation I’d like to avoid anything that doesn’t seem to match-up against my normal Tweets. I’m not sure many people really care about what I’m listening to, and those that do can follow me on Blip.fm.
I don’t use blip at all. I choose not to use most services that auto tweet in my account. When I tweet I am sitting in front of my computer. When I am not in front of the computer I don’t tweet. I prefer an interactive approach on Twitter and it seems to be working for me. As for the Blips of others, I tend to ignore most of them. If all I see in someone’s stream is a series of one Blip after another it becomes annoying.
Sheamus, I like the blog. It is nice to see those who put some thought into what makes Twitter tick and not tick.
.-= tomtravel2´s last blog ..Tweeting Travel News Again on August 7, 2009 =-.
Appreciate your comments – cheers!
I have found Blip to be extremely annoying for the exact reasons you mentioned – I honestly don't care what people are listening to, and I find it rude that they insist on filling up my feed with useless tweets. If I wanted to know what my friends were listening to on Blip, I would follow them ON BLIP.
I just wish people blipping their friend who has the same username as I have on Twitter didn't mean that I got to see them all as though they were talking to me on Twitter! Go away.