Twitter or Waffle?
Although a late adopter of Twitter I have learnt a lot about its charms and powers in the 50 something days that I have been using it.
In fact my Around the Blogosphere column for the March issue of Marketing magazine is going to be about my early days on Twitter.
Suffice to say I am now a complete convert to all 140 characters of the Tweet.
However it does have one great failing. Social media experts.
Self proclaimed social media experts to be precise.
I'm heavily involved in social media myself both personally and professionally. And I get a great deal out of it.
The sort of people I'm talking about are essentially Twitter spammers.
People whose use of Twitter is anything but social I think.
Their sole focus seems to be racking up more followers.
And what do these people with thousands of followers Tweet about?
Very little from what I can see.
They post links. Often to their own self-centric blogs.
They endlessly re-Tweet each others Tweets about links to their blogs.
And when you click through to their blogs they write posts about the power of Twitter and how to make money off it.
Of course I don't have to follow these people. Getting them out of my Twitter feed takes little more than a mouse click.
But if I did that I wouldn't have written this post.
Pic borrowed from Hugh
Labels: blogosphere, social media, twitter
posted by Stan Lee at 11:16 am
19 Comments:
Every time I see a Tweet along the lines of "Wow. I've just picked up eight new followers. I wonder how THAT happened?", I reach for my revolver.
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Seems like you got my email Stan?
You should move over to Plurk or Indeti.ca if you want to replicate what the early days of Twitter were like.
Twitter is mainstream well and truly now, and with any mainstreaming, there comes a fair share of punters.
i still love twitter and will continue to use it, 'cos i'm as selective with my twitter friends as i am with my friends IRL. and, as IRL, sometimes you think people are gonna be ace and they turn out to be a right twat. thankfully losing SMS twits is easier than getting rid of crap friends :)
I did love Plurk for a while too ... in fact, if there were more people using it, I would give up Twitter.
But we are social animals, aren't we?
To your point Gavin, if your friends aren't using it it ain't social. Surely?
I'm not certain you are on the money with your observation this time.
Guy Kawasaki is one of the top twitterers in the world. He advocates building numbers to build influence.
http://vizedu.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twitter-as-a-twool/
I know what you mean David, but I find the tweets of the so called top twitterers far less interesting/useful than yours or other like minded people I know.
@david
one question;
how the f*ck can somebody be 'one of the top twitterers in the world'
pish.
@eaon pritchard
Easy, once you get to that so called 'magic level' you cease to be a regular Twitter'r with letters after the @.
You are then allowed to abbreviate the term "Twitter", and use it before your nick name.
Now you can simply call yourself Tw@ instead.
Taking @scobleizer as an example, when he first started people used to refer to him as 'that man @scobleizer'
However, I now frequently see references to "that tw@ scobleizer"
Totally unjust IMHO
I love you Stan.
I'm with Eaon. Numbers of followers are meaningless. It's all about who.
@Eon - here's some useful info RE Guy Kawasaki: I have a personal blog about my house renovation. I used to get no more than 20 visits a day. Guy Twittered about it and I got 314 visits in the next 24 hours. Don't know if he's 'one of the top Twitterers in the world' but quite a few people seem to respond to his posts.
Re: Guy Kawasaki 'Top Twitters..." Here are the stats:
BarackObama (144,000)
cnnbrk (109,348)
kevinrose (91,856)
stephenfry (83,320)
leolaporte (77,611)
twitter (71,001)
mrtweet (56,971)
guykawasaki (53,613)
But that is beside the point. More importantly is his thesis on numbers. Reaching the right people in a network is often through their connections. That to me is the point of Twitter as a social tool. Instead of targeting an individual who is known to you you are able to reach the great unknown who may - when they are ready, willing and able - find you useful. In a funny way it is similar to the broadcast model that TV still uses. The level of waste is high, but there is still no more effective way to reach an audience with a commercial message.
To confuse numbers with ego is wrong in this context. Tools like 'retweeting'become the filters where members of your network begin to redistribute your message to people with whom they have an affinity.
There are some interesting ideas here about social capital and velocity etc.
http://ow.ly/7aS
Interesting discussion.
Follow me on twitter @joegreenz
Personally, I particularly "enjoy" the ones that retweet themselves from another account. *sigh*
Love the point about TV, David. Thanx.
Ah Stan, you read my mind.
How many experts does it take to..oh never mind.
David, really interesting point about the broadcast model
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@Chris Wright hehe!
@david @kaybar
ive nothing against guy kawasaki but like you say he's more like a broadcaster/entity than a person.
By your rationale the BBC or New York Times (or the legions of twitter spammers) are '[one of] the top twitterers in the world'
reach, audience, eyeballs etc
is that not the language of another age?
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