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Twitter Followers

I have been getting more interested in Twitter, since Digsby makes it much easier to tweet.  Coinciding with this interest, I have gotten more followers.  Each one with a little email announcement.  Many of these followers are wierd.  By wierd, I mean that they have a strange pattern on their profile.  Something like this:

twitterfollower

What the heck is this person doing?  They hardly ever tweet.  They follow 733 different people.  The 38 followers are people who follow anyone who follows them, so it’s sort of a feedback loop.  Why do people do this?  What is the benefit?  I don’t get emails from them.  Their updates don’t show up anywhere I can see.  It just seems wierd.

Are these people addicted to Twitter?  I am already nervous about following Guy Kawasaki.  He tweets alot and is crowding the Digsby window.

twitterguykawasaki

19,509 updates!!  Holy fish paste!  Guy is either seriously addicted or makes $10 per tweet.  Guy is a legend, so I have to assume it’s the latter.  I’ve only updated 57 times.  I would need to update 10 times a day for 5 and a half years to catch up!  Seriously.  Twitter only stores his last 6,400 updates, so I don’t even know what his original tweet was.

This interview sheds alot of light onto Guy’s Twittering.  I am going to stop following him…it’s too much info.  Sorry Guy.  It’s not you; it’s me.

Comments

4 responses to “Twitter Followers”

  1. Nick Finck Avatar
    Nick Finck

    First, best use of “holy fish paste” ever! Second, I agree, there are people I no longer follow, its not anything personal but I actually want to be able to read my twitter feed and see other people aside form one dude who keeps twittering every second. I do admit I sometimes do a double or triple tweet in a row but that’s about it. I try to twitter only when I feel its worth it. Anyway, I am sure Guy noticed but I am sure he understands 😉

    – Nick

    Reply
  2. Rachel Luxemburg Avatar
    Rachel Luxemburg

    GK uses automated tools to send out some (many? most?) of his Tweets. It’s not uncommon — you can push your blog posts to Twitter, and also use tools like SocialToo and TweetLater to automate your Tweets.

    Reply
  3. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    What about quality? Does that person really have almost 20,000 important things to say. Does he have even 100 semi-almost-kinda maybe important things to say. At some point this is just a waste of time, it is not progress, but a regression to something inane. If we were to look at the internet and judge it by usefulness, would there even be a net positive. If you take away the personal entertainment value, what is left. Yes, there is a tremendous about of useful things (research, bill paying, even shopping, etc), but does that balance against spam, porn, twitter, games, facebook, etc.). If you look at the top 50 sites on the web, this is how I break it down…

    1: 19 (38%) internet sites that just support other internet sites (search engines, online advertising companies, ways to get online, and internet/computer support). These have a net value of zero, since they are only as good the rest of the internet they support.
    2: 9 (18%) social communications sites (personal, video, or image communications). These have some value, but I think overall, these are not contributing to progress.
    3: 7 (14%) research sites. Hooray.
    4a: 5 (10%) Porn sites
    4b: 5 (10%) shopping sites. I think these are a positive since they increase competition and also fit into the research arena.
    6) 4 (8%) news sites. These are good, not that much better than a newspaper, but still an improvement.
    7) 1 (1%) game site.

    Facebook and MySpace are the fourth and fifth most visited sites. Uggg. Wikipedia is #8, hooray.

    Reply
  4. Olga Kouzina Avatar
    Olga Kouzina

    Dan, great comment, agree with you. Digging for value in all the twittering takes more time than it would take to actually come to understand and/or find out these important things by yourself, without reading someone else’s tweets.

    Reply

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