Why social media sometimes does more harm than good…

I rambled on this topic yesterday on Twitter, but since I ramble about a lot of things, this topic passed through the stream pretty fast. Summing up, the changes to Twitter’s RT system have made cross-promotion more difficult for indies, while making it easier for cliques to either promote themselves or to shut others out who don’t share their same interests. The problem is Twitter, though, and not the actions of the users.

Giving brief anecdotal examples, when I’m online all day, I’ll see someone RT something I tweet or retweet, and many times, it’s not even people following me. They just saw my tweet in the general timeline and sent it along. It might be a one-line joke, or several tweets strung together in a ramble. Or it might be a news story from someone else that I was passing along. So if I sit here all day and watch those little user portraits changing, I can confirm that several people are RTing links, and that the people of Twitter are doing their part. The key point is, I only see it if I sit on top of my stream like an owl watching for a mouse to come popping out of its hole.

But let’s say that I’ve published a new book, and I post a link and then leave for a nice dinner with hubby to celebrate. And let’s say that five authors also RT that link in the time I was gone. When I come back, all I see is the one RT. I don’t know who to thank, or who to make a note of later so I can promote their stuff in return. The only way I could know that is by being here 100% of the time, and that’s not how Twitter is supposed to work. People check in when they want, and they ought to be able to see when other people retweeted their stuff.

I’m a die-hard Twitter junkie, and if I can miss stuff like this, you can be sure authors who only check in for an hour or two are also missing out on who retweeted what. So even if they’re committed to cross-promotion and reciprocating retweets, they can’t know who to retweet anymore. This isn’t authors behaving badly. It’s twitter cutting off their ability to keep track of their follower’s activities. And if this is a problem for authors, its even more so a problem for the casual user who only checks the most recent tweets and mentions before checking back out.

Game review: Shinobido 2: The Revenge of Zen

After completing Uncharted: Golden Abyss, I’ve had bad luck finding a Vita game that I can enjoy as much from the other launch titles. If you read my last post, you know my language problems with Unit 13, and as of this writing Sony still hasn’t resolved the problem. This is forcing me to write to them at least once a week to remind them again that I’m still waiting for a patch, for a possible release date for a patch, or for a refund. The last would seem more likely, since they already refunded the game once. But we shall see what happens there.

Since I didn’t have much luck with the online store, I went out to the local shop to pick up Shinobido 2: The Revenge of Zen. This meant shelling out 50 euros for a box and a manual, along with some coupon codes for Touch My Katamari and Ridge Racer, two games I wouldn’t touch even if they were free.

Getting into the game involves a long, long intro with some really lousy acting. In fact, I may have to stop giving Skyrim shit about its lousy voice acting because of all the shit voice acting I’ve seen in recent Nintendo and Sony games. The opening story is pretty much standard fare from Japan. In a prefecture called Utakata, war breaks out between 3 daimyo, again. This is just six months after events in the original Shinobodo, but you don’t need to know about that to get into this story, because they sum up the whole other game in the opening act.

After you are introduced to Zen’s life partner San, she is murdered and set ablaze by Shu the Cypress, who is supposedly a family friend. Zen shows up in time to watch his partner roasting, and to be attacked by Shu and dumped into a river. Except, we aren’t allowed to see that part. We’re only told that by the dude who claims to have fished Zen out of the river below, a ninja master named Zaji. (This later turns out to be a lie, and in fact, Zaji lies like a rug to suit his own ideals.)