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I suggest you move to a federated platform like http://laconi.ca or the already hosted http://identi.ca
These are open source, decentralized, and working. They've got tons of participation and higher quality users.
It's open like email, not closed like twitter and facebook.
There may be a few others who stand to gain nothing financially, and who claim not to be motivated by ego. Of these, I can only say they fall into category, (c), which is irrationality.
While I think giving new users a starting place of people to follow makes sense (it'd increase engagement and people actually using it rather than just signing up and not using their account - something about it kind of grates for me.
to be honest - perhaps it is partly that I worked my butt off for a year or so to build my own follower numbers to 40k and then see others gain that many readers in a few days.... but to me it also seems a little against the culture of what Twitter is about for me - that is a network of people all interacting where the unknown person can be on the same footing as the celebrity....
To me seeing some of those on the list who are on it for no reason other than that they starred in a movie both makes sense (in that it's going to help twitter convince people to use it) but also makes me wonder if this is a network that I want to be a part of..... I mean I'm sure Demi Moore and Ryan Seacrest are going to be fascinating reads and all.... but is that what Twitter wants to be known for?
Perhaps this is just the inevitable though and I need to pull my head in and let Twitter go where it must go :-)
Strangely, thinking about this made me more sad than vision-filled.
We should probably separate the movie star type from the suggested list type. Movie stars picking up huge followings because of their fame is probably just a consequence of Twitter becoming more mainstream and with that come mainstream preferences.
I agree with Dave about the problems with a suggested list like this that has such a profound effect on users who are on that list. It is helpful, though, for new users to have a starting point so what is a better way to compile and present a list of existing users? A randomized list perhaps? Playing devil's advocate for a moment, populating the list with mainstream famous people is a good way to get new users involved.
Leo (and others) is certainly an icon but is he well known to mainstream users? It is very disappointing that he was left off the list and I can understand why he was angry. It is a tough one. I guess part of the problem is that it isn't clear on what basis the people on the suggested list were chosen. What were the criteria? What should they be?
Bijan got it right when he said that the current suggested follows is a short term fix to address the "out of the box experience" problem for many of the newcomers who have no idea what twitter is and who they should follow. the third party recommendation services aren't a great help to them because they don't even know what a third party twitter app is.
but you are right to point out that the current model isn't ideal and nobody knows that better than Ev. it's going to change and hopefully sooner rather than later.
fred
Also the number of followers a person already has should have no bearing on what names get suggested; should be completely about the contents of the users twitter stream. That way anyone using twitter has a fair shot of being suggested simply by adding value based around a certain set of terms.
The 99.98% of early adopters being left out are the ones with the skills and knowledge to build something better. Sadly, I can see twitter being like blogger. It started the blogging movement made it incredibly popular but nobody who is anybody uses it now...
We'll all be on individually hosted Twitpress platforms of some kind. Twitter will be filled with spammy accounts that make 5-10 updates and never return kinda like blogger. Sigh.
It's obvious look how many followers they have they truly must know more about this Twitter system than we do, we'd better agree. In conclusion to this blithering let me just conclude with this reamark.
Who the heck is Ana Marie Cox? She doesn't follow me and I could honestly care less how many followers she has. Should she follow me, I will give her the same courtesy as I give you or anyone else I follow. That should, Was and Will Always Be "the value of Twitter."
you forgot to mention the real purpose of our call. Battlestar Galactica!! I think maybe we are all cylons but I'll leave that for another day :)
Just for a little more color on things you mentioned in your post:
1 - The part about the phone company listening in was a point I was trying to make comparing Verizon to Google when it comes to messaging. There is a certain amount of trust that exists. I assume Google doesn't read my email on an indiviual basis. and that is a good thing. Also, i was referencing a recent post I wrote about controlled services vs hosted services (e.g. email).
2 - my twitter as a little guy comment was in comparison to larger entities like google, facebook, myspace. etc. I'm proud to be a member/end user of such a vibrant community as twitter and I'm happy to be an investor as well. And the growth has been exciting for sure. but compared to other services we're still smaller.
3 - the twitter suggested user feature definitely created a lot of attention. I agree with Ev that the old way wasn't great and the new model is better but not perfect. the old way left new users confused about who to follow when first joining. some believe that the new way is worse but I personally dont' think so.
love to hear ideas about a better suggested features model.
Here are some concrete suggestions.
There are plenty of Twitter discovery services. Throw them some love.
Build your developer community.
Ask your top users this question -- take them out to dinner, like the
guy from Bug Labs did. People love to be treated special and they give
up everything when you just throw a tiny bit of love out there.
I wrote about this in 1994, it's a mating ritual. How did you get your
wife to marry you -- that's the same stuff you need to do with your
top users and developers. Send flowers. Constant reminders that you're
thinking about them. This suggested user stuff sends the opposite
message. It's like your girlfriend discovering that you've been dating
the girls in Playboy and Penthouse. Seriously.
I know they don't like Scoble. Get over it. Same with Leo and Jason
and Guy. These guys know tons about Twitter that your guys don't. You
don't want them to jump ship, but I bet they would if they got a
better offer.
undergrad. She was hanging with the cool kids and I was hanging with my
skateboard, my guitar and my computers.
But she came around and I matured a bit
Nigel
I brought up the 10's of 1000's of new accounts just following the 'suggested users' people some weeks ago, they are not real people it's blatantly obvious by scrolling to page 500 of one of the suggested user accounts follower list and seeing that the no avatar bots have still made no updates.
I don't believe these ppl (suggested user accounts) have anything to do with these 'fake' accounts but I don't believe Twitter are also interested in doing anything about it as you explain above it gives some people incredible exposure and lift.
But what if these accounts are being created by someone malicious what if they all started tweeting links to virus' at the same time!? Surely that begs Twitters involvement, investigation and explanation if they don't then another question arises WHY are the doing nothing about it?
And I'm afraid you're wrong: it's *exactly* the way that the internet works. If Scoble links to me, I get lots of traffic. By your theory, that's all about "being in favor with" Robert. Or is it just that you trust Robert, and you don't trust Ev? And if that's the case, why not?
Twitter, is an infrastructure provider. It's a communications PLATFORM. As an actor, Twitter's role is to ensure that it's infrastructure and platform operate effectively and efficiently. It has not, so far, been in the business of editorial decision making. The suggested user list is an editorial decision which, as Dave points out, has consequences, financial and otherwise, in the world.
The better analogy is the ISP, phone company or Google. When sites aren't indexed by google, they suffer. When they're delisted, they suffer. Inversely, if Google decided to put your website on google.com, you would benefit greatly, but there'd be an outcry from people who thought that was unfair for an infrastructure (search = infrastructure) to do.
These aren't hard lines, and infrastructure providers often act as editorial decision-makers as well. AOL was a communications infrastructure AND content provider that cut deals for access to its home page. To that point, Jason C's concept of paying for access to the list has precedent and makes sense.
The biggest faux pas by Twitter (as with all infrastructure providers who tip the scales toward or against certain parties) is the lack of transparency. If people know that the best way to drive your follower count through the roof is to cut a deal with Ev & company, that changes how we operate. If it's a financial arrangement, that changes how we operate. If it's nurturing community, participating in conversation, having awesome content, etc, that changes how we operate.
By deviating from its strict focus on infrastructure into the realm of editorial, Twitter has introduced uncertainty into just what its role will be
The reason why I chose Scoble as an example isn't because it's an exact analogy - Google is better, and as I think I've shown, actually more accurate. The reason that I chose Scoble was because of Dave's quote about "being in favor with Ev" - as if the editorial decision Twitter made came down to who Ev liked. Dave is basically saying it's Ev's choice - which, if he's right, makes the Scoble analogy apt.
This brings up another point though which is that there are two different audiences affected by this decision: a) long time twitter users/investors and b) newbies. As simple as it is, Twitter's flexibility makes it incredibly difficult to explain to a new user. One of the best ways to learn how to use Twitter is to use it, and one of the first steps there is to start following people. If you hang out at SXSW, ETech, Mashable, etc, you probably have a reasonable starting place. If you just heard about it on NPR or some other news outlet, your curiosity could quickly lead to frustration as you try to figure out what to do with the damn thing.
Thanks for the exchange.
Also, I know you are but what am I?
The question is whether to have a suggested list AT ALL or not, and whether the role of "Kingmaker" is something to be avoided at all costs by companies responsible for "infrastructure", as you put it.
Friendfeed did the same thing. Go read CenterNetworks from July 06, 2008. Scoble, Calacanis, Lemeur & Arrington ALL benefited and none of them were crying about everyone NOT on that "suggested list" getting left in the dust or trying to buy their way onto lists they were already on.
The only reason this got brought up is because Scoble's about to fall off the top 100 Twitter users, like immediately (check Twitterholic or Twittercounter). So this isn't about transparency, it's about HOW the Twitter staff selected the people who were on that list. When I checked the list out the other week, somebody's CAT was on it, and Barack Obama was not.
On top of that, if you want to restrict Twitter as a company from voicing their opinion about who people might want to follow, you also have to restrict the personal accounts of everyone that's known to be an employee from things like #followfriday. Where does the policy end?
Like I said earlier, you can't have people paying to get on the list either, because that removes the list from the realm of "suggested" into "sponsored", which is an entirely different issue.
address book.
Google may play games with ancillary services, but I seriously doubt
they screw around with search. If they do, they deserve to go broke,
because that's the only thing they have that's really worth anything,
the fact that people believe that the contents of search is what
really is relevant, not who they like or don't like, or who paid them
for placement. The search engines they replaced were playing those
kinds of games, it's why Google had a chance to take the market from
them, as they did.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=google+censor+...
You made a point I was thinking about as I read Dave's post. Granted people on the suggested list are given an undue advantage and a huge leg up while other users have to work for their followings but people who have built up substantial followings still have the benefit of those followings.
It does burn a little that people who didn't spend a year or more building up their followings are granted the tremendous benefit of a massive following almost overnight.
One other thing is that I think twitter will follow websites like altavista and friendster and be the first but not the biggest.
To me, Twitter become more and more useless the more followers you have. In fact, I've considered dropping some of the people that have added no value to any conversation I've had on there. The only reason I haven't, is that because of applications like TweetDeck, I'm able to filter through the noise and see the tweets from people I want to see. (Honestly, the noise is the same reason I don't like Friend Feed.)
But as my number of followers goes up, I have to weigh "is this person worth a follow-back?" and "Are they contributing enough to be added to one of the filters?"
-Adam
But as for the article, I think the idea has merit. The out the gate experience for the average user w/o a clue, kind of sucks. I've had friends sit with 3 or 4 follows for months. I've taken to providing lists of people to follow combined with Twellow and Mr. Tweet urls to friends or nonprofits who join but haven't a clue. So I think a recommendation system rocks, in general.
That said, I can image that the current recommendation system has some ways to go to balance out bias claims. I really liked the idea of adding a mixture of recommendations based on location and interests; this intermixed with straight up recommendations would or could be a good idea. So for example, if I sign up and say I'm interested in media or tv and live in Bloomington, IN. I might get the top 10 Twitter users, 5 people from Bloomington, and 5 pop culture accounts. And since the list changes as you follow people, that could work through a number of people.
Obvious, making any type of recommendation skews what people use to see as the hard work playground. But that was often skewed on the semi-regular basis via newspaper articles, random radio mentions, the TV etc.
But Twitter Drama like this has fairly narrow appeal, and generally speaking, is much more important to a micro-micro segment of digital practitioners and consumers who find Twitter to be a nifty way to hunt, gather and distribute information--within the Twitter community.
The vast majority of journalists, CMO's and media consumers I encounter are still trying to wrap their heads around Twitter use, even as it has continued to evolve, and many can still find a million reasons not to engage, although it's obvious that people are eager to learn more about it.
Like you, Dave, I see the suggested friend gizmo as a simple indicator, and it ain't good.
But it's not at equilibrium, like Apache and PHP are. This kind of power always gets either shared or broken up. Google was able to concentrate so much power by sharing it with everyone and having fair rules about who gets high rank. Sergey's friends never got better treatment than others. That's super-important.
I'm sure some of the board members must have pushed them to favor other companies they've invested in, that's the usual Silicon Valley way, but I trust Google not to go for that. I could be wrong, but it's the impression that matters.
Before Twitter tilted the table, I was pretty sure they would do it, if pressed. Now that it's fact, I gotta assume even more tilting is coming. That makes me want to find other places to play.
I don't know exactly what it means. If a real competitor came along
that would create one possible answer, some of us would move there.
Probably everyone would instantly get an account, if it were done
right, some large number would stay there. If it had features that
Twitter didn't have that were high value then it might suck a lot of
the life out of Twitter.
It might mean lots of little Twitters. I'm starting one here on
scripting.com, and in the first few hours of use it's already
interesting. It wouldn't in any way be a replacement for Twitter. But
it offers and alternative. Sort of like the difference between a blog
and a big website, when blogs were just booting up in 1999 or so.
Or it could mean that Twitter voluntarily breaks itself up. Again I'm
not sure what that means, but it could mean that Twitter stops having
anything at all to do with the content of Twitter. Or it could split
into two, CelebrityLand and LandOfThePeople. I don't see any of that
as likely, but if I were part of their team, I would encourage them to
look at doing to themselves what the competition is likely to do it.
That can work out better, because then they get to do it on their own
terms instead of the rougher treatment a competitor might offer.
Right now though, if Facebook offered a "lite" user interface that did
just what Twitter does, plus a few nice extras, it would rule. Or if
Google did, they would probably suck a lot of the energy out of
Twitter. Not sure who else could do it.
Twitter didn't exist to promote Twitter. But it will exist for Twitter 2.0. So whoever does it will have a superior word of mouth network already built, by Twitter.
I saw this effect first hand by being here for the rise of blogging and then the rise of podcasting. The latter grew *much* more quickly because we had blogs to promote podcasting with. The slow part was the building of the network, once it exists, new ones that build on it boot up much more quickly.
I still think that ultimately the real value for individuals is in simply following the people who offer insight, information and comraderie who you wouldn't normally meet or talk to without a venue like Twitter. But I understand the company's right to try this out and see what happens. They will have to figure out a way to monetize the site eventually -- maybe this is a precursor.
I sent Fred Wilson a suggestion about a year ago that Twitter automatically assign (say) 10 FOLLOWERS to new accounts. They did something else, and as you say have screwed with the dynamics.
If they assigned you some followers it would have nice properties. The main one is that new users would not be expected to tweet in a vacuum (why Tweet if no-one is listening). The random followers could be taken from a group of Twitter users who had volunteered to FOLLOW some new people as a community service, maybe to make a new friend. It has a completely different dynamic, and one that I still like.
Regards,
Terry
be on the Suggested User list. I'm sure they would have devoted some
resources to it. If not them, Reddit.
Even if you managed to round up the top 50 Silicon Valley big shots (Scoble, LG, TC, Guy, Mashable, ...) to not use Twitter, it would not make a dent on the service. It could actually generate them some PR... something like "Twitter is officially for everyone, the geeks are out".
Yesterday, I even heard casual joke about Twitter on Jay Leno show. Twitter reach the YouTube status.
Thought-provoking, moving and disturbing. It's always seemed like Twitter's usefulness is offset by the amount of time spent rationalizing its usefulness. For something that got its first big push at SXSW as a freaky nerd BBS for party updates, Twitter continues to mercurially redefine its own purpose in the way that users interact with it.
Of course, one would like to believe that USEFUL = VALUE, but for guys like McCool, Wall, Lerdorf and that scriptingNews guy, it hasn't necessarily broken down that way (directly, if at all). Really too bad, since their hard work and efforts presently make up a good portion of our everyday lives. Ironically, UBIQUITY ≠ VALUE in a system driven by egos.
The economy has everyone on edge. Today, at least, no one is taking the bread out of my mouth, and, thankfully, I'm much less concerned about how much bread other people are getting that I'm not. It makes me nervous when people way smarter than me start kicking sand at each other.
waiting for google to integrate jaiku into gmail. i think that will send micromessaging mainstream, and enable google to exploit the social graph it obtained via gmail.
I really like a comment I saw in the LA Times piece on this topic: have a "recommend this user" button available on twitter, so users, rather than twitter staff/mgmnt., select who gets recommended for the suggested user list. I would love the option to "reward" those whose tweets I appreciate beyond just posting a tweet about them saying how valuable I find their stream. And I bet the suggested users list would be much more interesting and dynamic if it was created that way, by users one by one voting up the people whose comments they find to be the most insightful, valuable, interesting, etc.
If twitter posted a list like that while maybe also pointing new users to twitter search as a way to find users interested in topics they care about I think it would make for a great start for new twitter users while not disrupting the natural flow for the older users.
I think a personalized recommended user list would help too. Those who indicate they want to follow celebs can, but each person gets the type of recommendations they ask for based on some sort of search feature that searches all users rather than everyone gets one set list only that revolves around who twitter staff thinks is most valuable.
@msblog
(sorry if this is a repost, I thought I posted once but my comment didn't seem to show up)
I see no reason why the Twitter team can't participate in this. They shouldn't have to stand on the sidelines. As long as they are fair, and cognizant of their role, I see nothing wrong with their playing the game with everyone else.
But that's the value of a suggested users list, and that's the value of a huge presence on Twitter.
I wonder though if either scrapping that list entirely or having it fluctuate based on some kind of algorithim - most followers + number of retweets in a given period + length of time on twitter + recent activity - would be slightly fairer.
1st - not because you pay means you are a worthwhile person
2nd- there is always someone ready to pay more out there
3rd- it could potentially generate a small revenue but cause for sure a loss in objectivity.
4th- Spammers - @jason thinks we know them or that they go with a tag on their forehead; well they don't!
I would be curious to see if Twitter would show me some love and get a site that is self funded by the community up on the list with as you say "flow".
Whatever effort has been put into building a following the old-fashioned, organic way, is still valuable. Twitter continues to provide a free and open platform for disguising marketing redirects as interesting/helpful/funny updates. Even at 140 characters a shot, you gotta admit, it's pretty cheap advertising.
Th fact that the guy at the top is playing favesies with his buddies is annoying, but not egregious. Obviously, a hard pitfall to avoid, as it seems only right to be nice to your friends and supporters, but it inevitably pisses some people off. Was kind of hoping, naively, that the Internets would keep to the higher road on this kind of thing. It's what you make of it, I suppose.
I think the suggested followers list is a slippery slope. I hope twitter treads carefully.
I mean, this recommendation and ego boosting thingie has always been with us. It didn't just start with Twitter and Twitter isn't the first company to feature some of its users. I don't like this, for sure. And the fact that Twitter is a private company and not a foundation really sucks. But you use your Tech-VIP status for influencing others, too.
These are imperfect systems, heavily impacted by a handful of chosen/anointed favorites who then favorite and cross-reference each other in a big self-affirming swirl.
Clearly, it's not as pure as the algorithm but humans are messy like that. :-)
By the same token, I think that a lot of the love that Twitter has garnered is well earned. They nailed simplicity while maintaining openness and not getting in the way of structure (like hashtags) as it organically materialized.
Most of us don't have the intestinal fortitude to sit on our hands and let things germinate.
The counter is that Twitter as a company (great distinction) has not been transparent in their aims and roadmap thinking, and that lack of transparency coupled with youthful capriciousness can lead to...healthy dialog, which is exactly what you are putting forth.
Cheers,
Mark
--
Read my post - "Right Here Now" services: the collision of status and location in real-time.
(http://bit.ly/i40h)
Somehow you jumped to the wrong conclusion, where did I say or even
imply that we should live in an ad-free world? I might like it, but I
don't advocate it. I see a very thin line between commercial
information and advertising, and it's getting thinner all the time. I
seek out commerical information constantly. For example I just went to
the Amtrak site to look up trains to Salt Lake City. I also read
yesterday that Google is taking steps to make ads more relevant. When
this process completes they will both be the same.
back to the topic... Follower numbers are irrelevant, it's like saying a free paper that distributes, say, 5 million copies a day, has more clout than the NYT or WP. Delivering more eyeballs to techcrunch sites is irrelevant... Its what those eyeballs do when they get there that matters (BTW, would the person who follows @iamdiddy click and advert on a @techcrunch site ?)
Having said that, for my own interest, I'd love to know (and attempt to understand the logic behind) how these disparate people were selected for the list..
For example, I have a disease and have to pay about $500/month in prescriptions.
I dunno... just gets under my skin. But I guess overall I need to wake up and smell the coffee that traditional advertising is probably dead.
Anyway, lively debates are always good ;)
Why isn't this the way the web works? YouTube puts "featured videos" of its choosing on its homepage. Vimeo does too. You choose what links to put on your homepage and who to recommend.
Why shouldn't Twitter have some personality and say, 'hey, these are interesting people who we think are worth following'.
To me, that seems very much like the way the internet works.
the rest. To answer your question about "what's wrong" read the rest
of the piece. If you're trying to understand my point of view, that is
totally sufficient -- I explained myself at great length. If you're
trying to be argumentative, ie you want to argue -- no amount of
explanation will satisfy. Dead end, in other words.
Explaining yourself at great length does not make your points immune to being dissected. Why not focus on entities like the NYTimes or CNN or what have you that have hundreds of thousands with likely little to no effort, or are we simply calling them celebrities.
There does seem to be an odd cult of personality with early adopters of Twitter.
I don't see what the fuss is, the exponential growth of the last few and upcoming months is going to mean more and more individuals are going to get followers for little to no reason. That is the nature of the beast, unless we prefer the beast to be Sasquatch.
last year -- we'll probably have to go elsewhere. Twitter.com, as you
say -- is changing into something else. Hence the title of my post.
End of controversy. Enjoy! :-)
I've read your whole piece, and the point I'm making is that what Twitter is doing with its "suggested users" isn't that big a deal, is similar to what other web services do, and is no reason to "break out" of Twitter, as you suggest.
(Also, if I am going to get argumentative… I didn't simply pick out one sentence. I picked out the sentence which you yourself said was "the bottom line" of your argument.)
http://is.gd/n6XD
-- MV
to make sure i'm never on their list?
-bowerbird
The simple truth is that Twitter has the luxury of profiting from the cult of the celebrity while still providing a useful outlet for the fetish tarot card reader in Des Moines, and the litany of social marketing gurus who manage 100 tweets per day showing you how to profit by describing the weather. Let Calacanis and other Walter Mitty fantasists lead the way to sponsor revenue for Twitter; the hordes of small business owners who are scrambling to find time in their day to get into the mix won't even notice. I leave it to visionaries such as yourself to stake out the nascent interface for the purest to glob onto. The rest of us will follow, wide-eyed and with check book in hand 24 months later.
http://retweetist.com/users
Especially now, the number of followers is meaningless. What counts is how many people think what you post is worth retweeting. Mark my words, "Retweeting is the sincerest form of flattery."
I'd much rather be suggested a user to follow who has paid to be suggested to me because of what i'm writing or who im following than use a hand picked "suggested users list".
So, if this is the first step of the move towards more targetted recommendations i don't see the problem with that. It's still my decision on who to follow and what to listen to.
It's just mirroring natural society evolution. We need to get more sophisticated with how we judge who to follow or not, and who to listen to and who to block out.
This article / conversation takes us one step further in the evolution of twitter sociology.
good job.
@foodessentials
I value less followers and following less more. Last week I actually caught up on my rss feeds but there were probably around 50% of stories duplicated in two or more feeds. Someday we'll have ways of reducing the sources in blogs and Twitter (Twitter's search helps). I can actually keep up with all my followers tweets most the time. If I didn't we'd both loose out but that's where the value of friend feed kicks in - you can go away and come back to highly liked/commented pieces. So from that standpoint I think ff should remain different from Twitter.
In the end, how many of your 20K followers are loyal to you, vs. the 60K for Cox.
Just this week, Ellen Degeneres brought in 100K in about 48 hrs. They're most definitely loyal followers, because she's already established a prior relationship with them. She invited them while on TV, and they followed.
Ellen already paid her dues.
Twitter is your high school yearbook, in a nutshell, is what I'm reading. And your need for followers and that requisite pride and acceptance you feel comes off as awfully shallow. The bright side of 140 characters = posts that truncate or wink out of existence, like this one should have.
something there's always someone who will say "It's just like high
school." Two comments on that: 1. It's the other way around, high
school is just like life. 2. There ought to be something like Godwin's
Law for this -- at some point some jerk will show up and say "This is
just like high school."
Until Next Time,
Reese Payton
http://jaikido.blogspot.com/2009/03/jaiku-is-be...
By summer you'll see 1,000s of people with over 20K followers - and there will be no requirement of quality or substance for them to reach that point. The more people use the automated tools to auto-follow, monitor for keywords, and bulk follow/unfollow with churn rates above 2,000 people a day -- all the numbers on Twitter are rapidly becoming separate from any real-world meaning.
I'd rather have 100 people follow me that actually read my tweets and interact with me, than 10K people following me who each have 10K people they follow and everything gets lost in the shuffle.
I unfollowed 4,000 people yesterday because it just doesn't make any sense to try and have a large #following / #followers.
Like Bijan has mentioned as well as others - it's a feature designed to help new users get started... Not a conspiracy theory to move certain people to the top.
Besides, Followers is an antiquated measure of reach... I'm sure they'll figure out a better way to rank. The fact that Dave is sitting there and refreshing his twitter page to see if he breeched 20,000 followers is kind of sad.
If I'm Twitter, I love all the attention - but everybody should just calm down.
Is it me, or are we approaching a Social Media Bubble???
The whole thing is a joke
why would a person want more followers
so they can spam them with their get rich quick schemes?
If twitter went down tomorrow like magnolia I wouldn't loose no sleep
People need to get real.
DONT follow me thanks LOL
cool article stumbled
After the stupendous RSS growth, we all know, RSS is now touted as "No Next big Thing". Same may happen about Twitter.
Recently I performed an experiment via twitter/blog (highlighting a text chat)
updating during the Academy Awards / Oscars. It DID prove my thoughts: That people would subscribe to get the latest moviestar news, then UNsubscribe when they learned I could care less about fake dialogue and I hate the paparazzi!
I follow YOU, Leo, Scoble, etc. because I am trying to learn about new technology via osmosis. I'm the one who called into Leo's show in 2005 about podcasting and he referred to me as the Long Beach "Queen of Media" (back then I also wrote for a Signal Hill /LB newspaper).
Anyway, it's ALL good.
If I owned a company, I'd write "updating projects via twitter" into the job descriptions. It can really be a productive tool, saving time and money!
http://riledup.com
Thanks for your article though. Peace
term follower).
It's not self-promotion, my ego is fine, and I don't care how famous I am
(in fact I'd like to be less famous) but I care about influence. Our ideas
are all competing for attention. I think there are some bad ideas out there
that are winning, and I want to have my own and those I support get equal
time. I never want to drown out opposing views, but others do.
Hope that clears things up.
Thanks for your article though. Peace
I began to realize just how big twitter was getting when I saw them on the cover of time magazine at the store. Twitter has gotten out of control.
This past week I offered Twitter $10,000 a month to be on that list because, as you say, it does have real value. My suggestion to them is to sell half the slots on the list to non-spam type folks (i.e. maybe JetBlue, Netflix or Engadget want to buy a spot) and let the other half go to folks that Twitter's team think are most interesting.
This is the ultimate monetization play for Twitter. 10-20 folks do this a month, or 50 folks are rotated in and out during the month, and you've got $6m in revenues out of the gate.
all the best, jason
The question arises - if you don't allocate the spaces by buying them, is there a "fair" way to allocate them - especially when Twitter's base is converting from a tech-oriented community to a much more broader-based community? Is Jason "interesting"? Is Shaq "interesting"?
From the perspective of the company, Twitter needs to choose suggested users that most benefit the company, either via revenue (as Jason proposes) or by choosing suggested users that will encourage people to stay on the service and not drop it (e.g. Ashton).
The one thing that scares me about thinking of Twitter as a utility is that such a mindset could eventually lead to government intervention and regulation of the service, which would not be desirable.
Having said that, having a separate "sponsored list" isn't a bad idea as a monetizing scheme for Twitter.
http://ramenshop.com/internet/fake-followers-tw...