The Underachiever Life

I tried to post this on @probloggers excellent twitter site but for some reason it’s in moderation.

What do you think?

To give some context, this comment was in response to post which suggested you were a twitter snob if you did not follow everybody who followed you.

I am seeing a lot of this type of article the moment.

I believe it creates a fundamental misunderstanding of what twitter is all about. If twitter was designed as a chat service we would have never heard about it. It does something very unique as this 2.45 a.m. penned post points out.

When you have three or 400 friends and followers it may make sense to follow everybody who follows you. If you’re fortunate enough to have thousands of followers, following everybody who follows you is at best impractical and at worst disingenuous.

Twitter has a wonderful mechanism - the @ symbol. it’s a great equaliser, you can contact anybody regardless of race, rank, colour or status. I try very hard to respond to everybody who @’s me. When I do respond it’s a direct message - in that way my twitter feed does not look like a very rude one-way telephone conversation (to use Darren’s metaphor).

Twitter has fundamentally changed the way I communicate with a very large group of people who incredibly feel I have something useful to say. It’s truly revolutionary. However, I will not follow everybody who follows me, yes I could, but I won’t. That doesn’t mean I am a twitter snob! I use twitter as a mission-critical communication tool with my team and networking mastermind, mates from school and people who are just incredibly funny.

if I followed everybody who followed me and they just typed two messages a day on twitter and it took me three seconds to read each tweet. It would take me 14 hours every day just just to read my stream! Let alone, actually respond to anyone.

You see, this is where the disingenuous part comes in. If I follow you, I really follow you, I have a real interest in what you’re up to and what’s interesting you. If I followed everybody, somehow people believe that you would show exactly that same level of interest in everybody. As the previous paragraph pointed out - that is just impossible. And that, for me, is disingenuous. It’s just not possible to have that level of relationship and I think it’s much easier ( And ultimately much more genuine) to respond to people who use the @ symbol.

If you want a chat, I published my skype username on my blog and will absolutely friend anyone who wishes to contact me that way — that’s what skype was designed for. Twitter was designed as a service one person could notify a whole group of people about what they were doing — NOT FOR CHAT! — Twitter would not have enjoyed the wild growth that it currently is if it was just another IM platform. It Is Different. It annoys me that people are trying to turn it into something that it’s not.

The second reason that you should not follow everyone who follows you is it encourages spam. Twitter is the ultimate spam resistant service — AS LONG AS — you are selective about who you follow. If you’re not selective, then you will get spam. the founders of Twitter have recognized this and actually put strict limits on how many people you can follow.

Twitter is extraordinary, it’s change the way I do business. Used properly it’s the most extraordinary thing to use to communicate with your market, just remember, it was designed as a notification service to let your friends (or your market) know what you’re up to. It was never designed to chat.

Ed

PS: have you noticed how much I’ve been  Typing? I finally set up Mac Dictate yesterday and it has changed my life! The character recognition is superb, the training takes less than half an hour and as long as you force yourself to use it a couple of hours your life will never be the same.

Of course, if you can type at 100 words a minute, Mac Dictate is  not for you! I can’t type that fast and the ability to just be able to talk to my  computer and have it note down everything has I think it, well, it is extraordinary.

Tags: Internet marketing, Ed Dale, problogger, twitter, Mac Dictate,

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