I'm not sure why this surprises me, but there really are people out there in Twitter-ville. With as many followers as I have (and we'll look at the numbers in a minute), I often don't think people are paying attention, so it amazes me when they actually respond to something I've tweeted. That's one of Twitter's charms... the social part. People can choose who they follow, and how they wish to do so. There's the 'fly on the wall' approach, merely listening to everything said but not responding. There's the 'I don't care what you tweet, I'm really not listening anyway' approach. But the most valuable approach involves a bi-directional conversation. Let's call it the 'human interaction' approach.
Twitter is a great place to find breaking information. The 'trending topics' area of the home page helps notify people of breaking news. Be it politically motivated, or a pop icon has just joined Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon on the "Pearly Gates Tour", you can find it out immediately via Twitter. Of course, you don't have to wait for news to happen, you can also use Twitter to ask for answers to your questions. That's where it helps to have lots of followers (and hope they're paying attention).
What kind of 'follower' are you on Twitter? Are you the kind that watches the stream go by, or do you jump in and get your feet wet? It's a lot more fun to participate....trust me!
Followers: 8,428
Following: 8,637
Updates: 251
Rank: 4,488th
Ay Carumba! Those numbers are getting BIG! I know I haven't posted in a while, but it's amazing how far we've come in such a short time. Keeping the Twitter-Follower-Friend ratio near 1.0 is still our strategy, and we're doing pretty well at a solid .98 (No, I didn't do the math in my head. Somebody spent a long time coding and testing the calculator program that comes with the operating system and I'll be damned if I'm going to insult them by not using it). Once we reach our goal, I promise we'll have a little fun with this ratio, but now's not the time.
The numbers are getting big, which is also putting stress on the way Twitter exposes itself through its API. When collecting friend and follower information in blocks of 100, you bump into Twitter's 150 API calls per hour limit once you get over 15,000 total friends and followers. We're now over 17,000 so it's getting tricky. I'll let you know my technique for dealing with this as we go. The problem is only getting worse, but it's a good problem to have.
Until next time....Don't forget to follow me on Twitter! twitter.com/campbed
Don
P.S. I know I've just lectured you about contributing to conversations on Twitter, which got me thinking about how few comments I've received on this blog. When I looked at the settings, it appears that some ignorant blog administrator (I mean me by the way) forgot to enable anonymous comment posting. Hopefully it's fixed now, so please feel free to comment as much as you'd like. I highly encourage it (despite the fact that it appears I've locked you out in the past). I don't even require review before your comments become public. However, keep in mind that I still hold 'ultimate power' over the blog and I'm not above using it! -- Don
Monday, July 20, 2009
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