A Twitter Rant and a Little Experiment!

Posted February 9th, 2009 by Paddy 4 Comments »

I like it because of its simplicity, because of its connectivity, because of the absolute wealth of information and willingness to share amongst its users. I have learned an abundance through some of the professionals who are so confident in their craft that they don’t mind throwing a bone to “n00bs” here and there – that’s impressive.

There are things on Twitter, however, that don’t make any sense. And these are sometimes committed by otherwise sensible people.

Here’s one issue: Why are some so obsessed with the number of people following them and try at lengths to garner more baseless readers? Are you the cool kid in gym class if you have 4 or even 5 digits of followers? Are you more profitable? The answer may be yes to both, but what do I know? I’m happy with my hundred and change followers. I’ll even admit that some of those followers auto-followed me, so it lends no credibility to me as a person, as a professional, or as an interesting read. However, I can actually read all the Tweets of my followers (and those I follow) because I have a manageable number of both.

That leads me to another not entirely separate oddity: Someone tweets “Help me get to 5,432,623.53 followers by the end of today!” or worse “RT: My Friend @WhatevaHisOrHerNameIs needs to get to 5,432,623.53 followers by the end of today! Please help him or her, (s)he is a really great guy/gal, you will love his/her Tweets!” I personally don’t care about that many followers, especially if I don’t reel them in based on something that actually interested them.

Note: I totally subscribe to and engage in recommending other Tweeters based on credence or likability.

Disclaimer: If you are stuck at 666, it is ok to try and reach 667. No one wants to be stuck at that dreadful number.

I’m a live and let live kind of guy. I am not offended when I am auto-followed or auto-DMed. I don’t even care when I am followed by someone who is firing off follows one after another without regard to whom they’re following.

The reason I’m writing about this is… I. Just. Don’t. Get. It. This person below has FAR more followers than me with 5 updates! He is not the first one to do this, won’t be the last so I’m only kind of sorry I’m picking on him. But Mica happened to follow me when I had nothing else going on so I decided to try a little experiment:

That many followers with that many updates?

At midnight on Sunday, January 25, 2009 (the life of a web marketer, sheesh) – immediately after Mica followed me I went to his Twitter page to check him out (as I usually do for new follows). That’s when I noticed the anomaly. I repeatedly hit the refresh button to watch as “1852 Following” and “172 Followers” became “1842 Following” and “193 Followers”. Let me break that down: Mica adds as many people as he can as he is auto-followed by many in response. Then Mica unfollows folks he realized didn’t auto-follow him in return. So, he follows fewer people as his followers increase. It was kind of fun to watch in real-time. So I’m a nerd. (FYI – Mica’s account @MMMaverick09 was suspended before I finished writing this post so I didn’t get a final screen shot of his followers vs. following dern it!)

So ok, fine. That’s Mica’s way. But why? Is it possible that spam still works? Is it worth it to go through the trouble? It’s pointless as far as I can see…

I’ll probably never have 4 digit followers and I’m ok with that. And I don’t follow everyone who follows me. I like my little clan of “Tweople”, I can keep up with them. Twitter works for me because I follow who I want. Interest me and you’re getting followed – like it or not. I’m not even concerned if you don’t like me enough to follow me back.

Whew – done and thanks for the outlet. If you enjoyed this mumbling, go ahead and subscribe. It’s free and I would love to have you along.

So, what are your Twitter annoyances? Surely Mitch and I are not the only ones!

4 Responses to “A Twitter Rant and a Little Experiment!”

Kfred85 Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hey Paddy,

Love the post! You and I share many similar ideologies about twitter. Following everyone and attaining astronomical numbers aren’t the point.

I must admit I felt a bit sheepish reading your post after my tweet last week about getting to 200 followers. Imagine my shock when I saw the link to your tweet in support of me! Always giving that twitter love

Another nicely written post. Keep it coming!
Paddy Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
@kfred85, I’m bugged by people BEGGING for followers, not by wondering whether they’ll get to a certain number as seen here:

http://twitter.com/kfred85/status/1183491693

IMO there is a distinction!

You’re are one of my favorite Tweeters, contantly relevant and always interesting! And I thank you for that!!
Mitch Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Greatly written. In the case of Mica, if you saw the link to the website, he (or she) was hoping people would just check out the link and make some sales. In that respect, the numbers game makes a lot of sense. Now, because you couldn’t go further, I’m betting that, instead of your premise, Mica actually deleted many people who were auto follow instead, since those folks wouldn’t have taken the time to go to his Twitter page to see what he (or she) might have had to offer.

Still, Twitter does get those people in the end, which is the savings grace of it all. But those other people who are clamoring for more followers all the time, it’s an ego thing at some point. I have no idea how one person can follow 20,000 people, but seeing a person with 20,000 followers,… well, I’m not going to actively go for it, but I’d love having that many people following me at some point because it may mean I’ve finally gotten some juice and might have the opportunity to engage some of those folks in business ventures.

But I’m not actively shooting for it, as I said; we’ll see where it goes organically.
Paddy Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Very interesting take Mitch, I hadn’t thought of it. If Twitter users are as web savvy as I suspect they are, they would realize this fella (or fellette!) for what (s)he is based on the followers vs. following especially given the lack of tweets. But you are probably right – spending an hour or so machine gun following people for free which results in a few sales might make pretty good business sense in terms of ROI.

I, like you, would prefer a more organic sale.

As far as following 20,000 people, as you know, applications such as TweetDeck have made it easier to “appear” to follow that many, when actually following whomever makes the cut to a smaller more manageable group (all the while ignoring the rest).

And Mitch: You got juice! I mean… who gets interviewed by bestselling authors except those in possession of the coveted JUICE!