How I Supported some Free in July

OK, so, a quick report on this month’s investments in the community…

I did something very different this month, and purchased an actual sponsorship for Destination DIY, which is a radio show I donated to last month as well.

Honestly, I didn’t decide to sponsor the show for any exposure potential. (I’ve written elsewhere here about what I think of the actual effectiveness of sponsorship.) I did it because I had a rare month of having a few nickles to rub together, and I wanted to do something substantive for a fellow indie media-maker. I spent a couple hundred bucks, which is way more money than I usually have in my budget for community support. But it felt great to be able to do it this once.

…And then, I made a smaller donation to Twit Cleaner, which is a pretty amazing free service that helps you manage the people you follow on Twitter. It analyzes everyone and tells you things like:

• Who posts mostly links and rarely has conversations
• Whose tweets are being entirely fed in from a blog or Facebook account
• Who hasn’t been on Twitter in over 30 days (That’s represented in the image above, btw)
• Who is and isn’t following you back

You can even unfollow people right from your Twit Cleaner report. It’s just a ton of value for a free service.

And you know what? Every one of us probably uses some kind of free web service during the course of our lives and businesses. We assume that stuff on the web should be free. And yet, Twit Cleaner has a real human being behind it (@SiDawson). He’s worked hard on this tool, so why should I use it and not offer anything in exchange?

Thanks, as always, for witnessing this monthly project of mine.