close
| What kind of Twit are you? |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by T.S. Elliott | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 19 January 2009 00:00 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I have just added a poll to my frontpage to see what most people who visit my site think about following people back on twitter. In my opinion, there are three kinds of people on twitter: 1. Celebrity - These are the ones who don't follow anyone back and just want people to follow them. Well, they follow some people - but don't even care who is reading their tweets. EX:
Clearly- this person has a lot of followers, but does not follow very many back.
This guy follows more people and has less followers, but it does not make sense to me why he has so many updates. He clearly is not talking to his followers.
This person is following more people than the other two and updating a lot, but why do this many people want to read tweets from someone who isn't talking to them??? 2. Friendly - The second group of people on twitter are the ones that try to follow as many people that follow them as they can, so that they can meet people and have conversations. EX:
This person obviously is not following everyone back, but you can tell that he tries. Realistically, at the point when you have this many followers- it would almost be impossible to follow them all. You can see that he talks with people and has real conversations back and forth.
This Lady has no problem following people and talking to people. That is what twitter is about. She is friendly and I have watched her quadruple her followers in the last month and I know she puts a lot of hours into talking with her followers on a daily basis. She is not on twitter just to get a bunch of followers and a high score on some website.
Yes, this is me!! I am in this group. I follow as many people back as I can because I am here to chat with other people and not chat with myself. The best way that I know to have fun on twitter is to go out and talk to people. 3. Wacky - The third group of twitter people are the ones that are here to flow feeds, spam, negativity or garbage. These people do not want to have conversations and they hope that by just having a twitter account that someone will notice them or listen to what they are saying. I don't understand this group of people at all. EX:
Look at the amount of updates and they are following one person!!! Crazy.
This one is even more strange. No avatar, has followers and I have never seen so many updates!!!
This one is following noone and I don't get how they even have followers!! hmm.
So, I know that everyone has a different belief about what twitter is for them. Personally, I don't see the reason for following anyone that is not following me back. Unless both people are following each other, you can not DM and that means you have a communication barrier. I send 5 times as many DM's as I do @replies. I do not see the value in having a follower that you do not have the ability to talk to. I want to know the people who are following me. Yes, I do have too many followers now to know, but at least if I follow them all back - I can learn something about them if I want to and chat with them if something comes up. I am no expert on twitter, but people do ask me all the time about how to get followers and my answer is - you have to follow everyone back!!! This is my video response on youtube to another person Owen (@Ohdoctah) who was talking about people who follow a lot of people and then unfollow them after they follow, so that they look like they have a ton of followers!! That is a bad idea to say the least. I am not trying to trash anyone with this blog, I am just using real accounts to make my points.
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 2527 Trackback(0)
Comments (11)
Miss Attitude
said:
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments |
Tweet on sister! Ok, I couldn't resist coming to check out some of your Twitter posts after last night's Twitter Taste Live. You are right on! I hate those automatic follow e-mails, it's all spam! I have, however, unfollowed people, after bad experiences or annoying interactions. But they also have the right to unfollow me anytime they choose. |
Amy @ Living Locurto
said:
 |
... Interesting... I never would have thought to follow people then de-follow them to make it look like I had followers! Man, that was a mouthful! LOL! Some people have way too much time on their hands. I try to follow as many people as I can, but get annoyed with the celebrity types. Why bother following them unless you can have a conversation with them... heck even Darth Vader follows people back. I would think it would bring them more fans if they followed more people. |
Lorrie cuteangel79
said:
 |
great post that was a good post i have a few celebs on my list and fran drechser actually did message me back. usually i try to retweet others posts and i have several people that are my faves on twitter and i always write a thank you note to those who follow me. but if im not intersted in what others write or they dont reply to me etc i will unfollow them. also for those who i follow and dont follow me back i try to retweet something oftheres this usually gets me a follower check out my blog and leave a comment on one of the blogs thanks |
TS
said:
 |
Thank you Grateful, Thank you so much for the wonderful comment. I try to write about things that will help people like myself (who don't already know everything). I never know if what I am writing is really understood. It means so much to know that in some way I have shared something of value to you!! Thank you for telling me too, it has inspired me to want to share more. |
Stephen
said:
 |
Grateful follower Your observations are extremely helpful and I'm taking it all in. You were one of the first memorable accounts I followed. Most all of the conversations were way over my head but I tried to take in as much as possible. About 33 days ago I caught a stream that led me to usernamecheck dot com and whoa that elevated my online experience exponentially. I am pretty sure that (I don’t want to lie, thus the qualifier) got me to immediately get accounts for tinyurl & delicious and start putting together my blog (blogger). I was already thinking about it, but things really started to gel. The point is that this is all so new to me and my subject matter is such that I think people don’t necessarily want to engage in “extended” conversations about impact of global financial meltdown, personal/small business debt load (I don’t even ask), bank bailout plan(s), etc. Politically, economically, etc. I’m somewhere in the middle and I don’t spout off about how the government this and the bankers that (not too much anyway) but occasionally (or more) I do ask quasi provocative questions on articles I put out there and I have some folks comment back on them, so I’ll comment back and maybe ask more questions. But typically the conversations (out there) are short. I do get longer ones that are DM’d and I encourage these folks to put it out there, but again sometime the subject matter is such they prefer not to. For me this is a passion not a business. My thing is to help create awareness and spread the message, “responsibly reduce ‘bad’ debt, spend less, & save more”. I believe that things will get worse before they get better. I also believe that folks like you & your team will be/are at the epicenter of change…are the “brain trust” if you will, that will be the architects of how “we” will work, live, communicate, exist,….now and in the future. I am just a guy that knows a few things and I wish my “desk” job and my online passion weren’t so separate so I could be more engaged, but things are the way they are. I hope all is well. I am a follower. I am a sponge! -Grateful |
ShelleRae
said:
 |
Tweet On For me Twitter is multi faceted. I love talking to AlohaArleen, Chris and to TS and I wish I had something of value to add to Miss Rogue, LOL! Yet for me they are all personal. I do now Vet I think is the word my people. I don't follow back thous with too many updates and no following. I don't follow back those who talk to themselves alone. I really have enough schizophrenia types in my life - I do not need it on twitter too. But social media is about conversations, relationships, tribes and community. When we sue it as such we win in ways that can not be measured. |
subq
said:
 |
... different classes on twitter, if you are just a person, I think you should interact and follow people back...if they don't follow people back no reason to follow them IMO however, if they are a vendor or someone speaking for a vendor then I have no problem if they don't follow people back, i.e. news services, companies posting information about what is going on etc etc... both serve a purpose on twitter IMO ...so basically I'm saying you need to figure out what class they fall into first, then go from there as far as the following to followers ratio |
T.S. Elliott
said:
|
Responses Melissa, for me - twitter isn't about keeping track of anyone. It is about having lots of cool people to talk to about things I don't know anything about yet. I just love talking to people who share cool links and finding things that I would have never thought of even looking for. Mike, the funny thing is that I don't even follow Chris Brogan - I don't have the time to read all of his stuff. LOL Rob, it does make me sad that I can't keep up with everyone in my twitter network, but I chat with so many everyday that I feel ok about not chatting with all of them. |
Melissa
said:
 |
... I like your thoughts. I must admit I have followed people and then unfollowed them, basically because they update every 30 seconds and that's just too much for me. I'm not sure how you can really follow 10,000+ people though. I find it hard enough keeping track of my friends and family! If it's about conversations, then surely you can't be talking about hundreds, let alone thousands of people. I'm reasonably new to Twitter, so maybe I just haven't "got" it yet, but to me, the value has been in connecting with people who do similar work to me, getting (and passing on) useful articles, websites and blogs. That's been the true value as far as I'm concerned. JMHO! |
Tall Geek
said:
 |
Da Geek Good points, I am just coming out on twitter. By far I am no expert, but I think I get it. Chris Brogan is someone I study fairly closely, as he embodies all that is social media. Those trolls with the huge updates are probably bots generating links to sites for who knows what. I would say SEO stuff. BTW love the design of your site. Someone has some serious skills in your house. Mike |
Rob McGuire
said:
 |
Slave to my cat I totally agree with you on many of your ideas about Twitter. I prefer to only follow people who also follow back. Not to boost my "numbers" (I could care less), but because that's the way to have two way communication. The people who follow then quickly unfollow annoy the bejeebers out of me, but what can you do? They're all over Twitter. I follow 3 of the people you profiled here (you, AlohaArleen and Chris Brogan) and think you are right on about them. They have thousands and thousands of people who follow them and they follow about just as many and it boggles my mind how they can actually interact with most of their network. I'm in the 400's range of following/followers and find that challenging enough to try to keep up with everyone! |
Write comment
