I’ve been using Twitter since Oct 2007. Initially, I was skeptical and really didn’t see the (professional or personal) value in it. Like many, I’d read something somewhere about how cool it is and decided to check it out. My first impression was, “Who the hell cares what I’m doing, aside from my wife and immediate family members? Besides, they won’t use the tool anyway, so what’s the point?”. Not long after, though, I began changing my tune and using it more frequently.
Nowadays, I check my Twitter account on a daily basis, with nearly the same frequency with which I check Facebook and Gmail. I’ve hand-selected a nice group of 126 people to follow, the majority of whom are in the entrepreneurship/interactive marketing/social media/blogging/creative spheres.
Some examples of those I follow:
- Michael Arrington, Tech Crunch
- Mike Volpe, Hubspot
- Robert Scoble, Fast Company and Scoblizer.com (I think everyone in the social media space follows this guy!)
- Chris Brogan, CrossTech Media (ditto!)
- OnStartUps, by Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot
- Paul Roetzer, PR 20/20
- Pete Cashmore, Mashable
- Search Engine Land
- Guy Kawasaki, Entrepreneur/VC
- Shaq, just for fun (yeah, it’s really him … or at least his PR agent)
My use of Twitter is more professional – I have no desire to communicate (or read other people’s) non-valuable personal tid bits on recent bowel movements or whether I like cashews or not. Really, who cares. If I come across something interesting, either through a blog or another person’s Tweet (Twitter lingo for “short message submitted”), I will send this out to those who are following me (114 to date).
But despite my fondness for Twitter, there are a some mysteries I don’t yet understand: those who focus on following and being followed. I regularly receive notifications that people are following me, and upon checking their Twitter profile, discover that they’re not even closely associated with business/social media/etc.
The most recent example (from just earlier today): I receive a notification that “Brooks Bayne is now following you on Twitter!” As I always do, I click to see more about this person. I discover a picture of a man who looks like Kip Winger or a group member of Poison, who describes himself (among other things) as someone who is “a music producer and melter of faces utilizing molten guitar riffs“. WTH? Then I notice he’s following over 16,000 people. Oh, I get it … this is a shining example of Twitter’s underbelly — a self-promotion trick of following anyone/everyone in hopes of being recognized. Ugh.
Seriously, how on earth can someone possibly keep track of the rants and raves of over 16,000 people. The answer: they can’t. Even my new BFF Brooks Bayne (who most likely still lives with his mother, sleeps ’till the afternoon, and draws an unemployment check) doesn’t have the kind of time needed to really, truly “follow” that many. The tactic of following the entire Twitter universe is, in my opinion, like saying, “Hey world, it’s me! I don’t care what you have to say … but boy, you should listen to me!” Again, ugh.
Hey, Dave.
Thanks for the mention, especially as a part of that list. As Twitter becomes more mainstream, I think we’ll all continue to see more people mass-following in an effort to get noticed. Certainly annoying, but all we can do is ignore them until a better filtering system comes along.
Paul
actually, u followed quite a few mutual twitter “friends” (except i actually know most of the ppl u were following in the tech and social media world irl because of what i do and where i live) and i kept seeing u @ reply them all the time. i assumed u might be someone i needed to know.
my situation was an interesting one. i rode the wave that is known as #tcot. there was a mass twitter explosion of conservatives that occurred from nov 08 – march 09. there were several highly visible political projects i was a part of and i guess i got some notoriety from it.
additionally, i now use tweetlater to auto-follow ppl back (trying to maintain a 1-1 follow ratio). unfortunately, now that means there’s a lot of spam accounts that i follow back and subsequently will have to unfollow.
btw, i sold my last company to amazon in ’08 and haven’t lived at home since i was 18 back in 1985. the picture u referred to was of when i was a touring musician and i used it as my profile pic because we were all participating in the #80sPhotoDay meme http://gs86.photobucket.com/groups/k87/D1HASYGAOP/ http://themacmommy.blogspot.com/2009/01/80sphotoday-meme.html
i noticed ur now not so selective in who u follow, since u follow 745 ppl as of today, and 689 ppl follow u. what was the impetus for that change?
hopefully, ur not as bitter these days. lighten up, man! where’s the love?!
anyway, i hope ur well, dave.