Since we hit our goal of 10,000 followers some time ago, there's very little to keep me interested in continuing the journey. The only amusing part is when a milestone is obtained. I know it's not much, but it seems to amuse me. Today marked a couple of significant ones for me...
The first milestone was reaching 10,000 Direct Messages! Can you believe it? A few short months ago I had only 3 followers, and now I have people so enamoured with me that they need to seed me personal messages on Twitter. Not 1, not 100, but 10,000 of them! Wow, I must be special! As I've said before, my best guess is that 99.99% of these messages are pure spam, and I feel very sorry for the person who sends me a real messages through DM. How would I ever find it? Twitter doesn't even provide a search mechanism for DMs, so you might as well throw your message in the trash. What makes me laugh is that many of these Direct Messages are trying to sell me some new and creative tool for accumulating Twitter followers. No thanks, I'm doing pretty well on my own.
The second milestone occurring today, is that I passed the Prime Minister of Canada on number of followers. Luckily I live in Canada and not the U.S., as passing Obama would be a MUCH tougher task. Anyway, I was pretty amazed by it. I wonder if Prime Minister Harper knows I've passed him? Perhaps I should send him a tweet and let him know of my awesomeness. On the other hand, he might get so upset that he invades Poland or something. Guess I'd better not.
Followers: 18,076
Following: 17,587
Tweets: 292
Rank: 2,658th
Over 18,000 followers (and counting!) Notice too that Twitter changed the name of the stat formally called "Updates" to "Tweets". The 'hip' lingo of Twitter is something that has taken on a life of its own. Words or phrases like 'tweeps' (people you talk with on Twitter) and 'Fail Whale' (the page you see when the Twitter service is down) are the way to spot the really cool (kewl?) users. And of course, the hacking of words to take up fewer characters (like 'UR' for 'you are' and 'PPL' for people). I prefer the challenge of retaining as much of that old language....what's it called again?....oh yes, ENGLISH, as I can. Try being grammatically correct in 140 characters. It's rly tuff.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter!: twitter.com/campbed
Don
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Still Going
It's been two weeks since we reached our goal of 10,000 followers on Twitter. Now what? It appears there is a bit of a momentum effect as the numbers keep climbing. I have no intention to compete with the really serious number seekers, but I'm still amazed at how far we've come so fast. There's some fun and interesting mountains to climb that all of a sudden appear to be within reach. For instance, I'm currently only a few thousand followers away from toppling the Prime Minister of Canada. That would be cool!
Forget about the numbers for a moment. What about Twitter itself? I'm learning that the dynamic nature of Twitter is really its biggest success. I keep staring at my daily newspaper and it never seems to change, yet every time I refresh my browser I have new content waiting for me on Twitter. It is very much the way of the future. Information should be instantly available, and easily filtered. Add triggers and agents and text mining and all of a sudden you've got the world's knowledge at your fingertips. It's quite the power trip! Now if only we could eliminate server glitches and denial of service attacks that take down the system, we could actually start relying on this information as a serious life-sustaining infrastructure. Who thought that 140 characters could be so powerful?
Followers: 14,118
Following: 14,092
Updates: 278
Rank: 3,090
Cracking the upper echelon of the Twitterverse is a daunting task. There is a VERY sharp curve as you make your way towards the top (and Ashton Kutcher's 3-million+ legion of fans). The numbers start getting nose-bleed high, and it takes work (or a nationally syndicated tv show) to keep advancing. I know I should just gracefully accept 14,000 as my limit, but I can't help wondering how the air feels up there in the lofty heights of Twitter's elite. But is it worth the effort?
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/campbed
Don
Forget about the numbers for a moment. What about Twitter itself? I'm learning that the dynamic nature of Twitter is really its biggest success. I keep staring at my daily newspaper and it never seems to change, yet every time I refresh my browser I have new content waiting for me on Twitter. It is very much the way of the future. Information should be instantly available, and easily filtered. Add triggers and agents and text mining and all of a sudden you've got the world's knowledge at your fingertips. It's quite the power trip! Now if only we could eliminate server glitches and denial of service attacks that take down the system, we could actually start relying on this information as a serious life-sustaining infrastructure. Who thought that 140 characters could be so powerful?
Followers: 14,118
Following: 14,092
Updates: 278
Rank: 3,090
Cracking the upper echelon of the Twitterverse is a daunting task. There is a VERY sharp curve as you make your way towards the top (and Ashton Kutcher's 3-million+ legion of fans). The numbers start getting nose-bleed high, and it takes work (or a nationally syndicated tv show) to keep advancing. I know I should just gracefully accept 14,000 as my limit, but I can't help wondering how the air feels up there in the lofty heights of Twitter's elite. But is it worth the effort?
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/campbed
Don
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