This is the second of a 3 part series. You can catch up on the first part, A Gourmantic Affair with Twitter Part 1 – Seduction.
As a novice studying twitter profiles, I quickly noted an emerging trend. There are those who seemingly follow all their followers (Following = Followers), those who appear as authorities (Following < Followers) and those who actively or aggressively follow others (Following > Followers) possibly in the hope of gathering numbers.
When it comes to friends, I’ve always been one for quality over quantity. I prefer a handful of good friends to a bunch of acquaintances and superficial connections. As a Gen X’er, I haven’t grown up collecting hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook or other social networks. Surely collecting ‘followers’ is merely a numbers game.
Where do I fit in?
A bunch of questions floated around like a swarm of bees on lavender flowers. Should I follow everyone who follows me? Should I follow the leaders in my niche area? Would the big guns notice me or follow me in return? Is this a popularity contest that tends to excessive egos? Do people with over 100 followers really keep up with all of them, let alone those with thousand followers? If I follow a lot of people, will I get more readers on Gourmantic?
It all seemed too much like teenagers at high school trying to impress or outdo one another.
What about the content of all these tweets?
I saw profile pages with one retweet after another as if it ran on autopilot. I pondered if they even read the blog posts/articles they’re tweeting. Others made me feel as if I were eavesdropping on a two-way conversation. I became bored quickly. Some were downright witty, informational and always packed a punch. I immediately followed them. Some were too obvious in greasing palms or the hands that feed them. I noticed established cliques. I rolled my eyes at the politics. This was beginning to feel like a typical workplace environment. Did I really want to join those ranks?
Twitter can be daunting and time consuming.
Starting out in Twitter was undoubtedly a daunting exercise. I watched and studied people’s tweets before diving off the deep end and engaging others. Although not a stranger to online communities by any means, I felt like the new kid at school. I stumbled, made some mistakes and learnt something new in the process. But overall, every chunk of time spent on Twitter left me feeling overwhelmed and despondent. I wasted significant time and effort. Time that could have been put to better use by writing.
It was time Twitter and I had words. In no more than 140 characters, of course.
Next: A Gourmantic Affair with Twitter – Part 3 Compromise: Five Lessons I Learnt from Twitter
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I don’t get the numbers game. How do people get to have so many followers?
Chris: Not quite sure how one gets to the thousands and beyond. Some are into reciprocal following and I guess that’s one way of drumming up numbers quickly.
[…] of the series. You can catch up with A Gourmantic Affair with Twitter – Part 1: Seduction and A Gourmantic Affair with Twitter – Part 2: […]
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