I still haven’t quite figured out what the hell I am supposed to do with Twitter. I signed up with Twitter a year ago, but because so few people (I knew) used it, I had actually removed the Twitter sidebar extention I had installed on Firefox. But then all of a sudden, just a few weeks ago, people started adding me. Or, as Twitter (and Tumblr) say: «Follow me». What a strange term to use?
Followers? As in dicilples?
So with the three people who added me just today, I have 16 people following me. Think about it! That is four more than Jesus! But after the first millisecond of exitement, I started to feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders to actually twitter something insightful! To weigh my words better, to say something profound to my new «diciples»! And at the same time I feel ashamed of my previous Twitterings, like:
See what I mean?
Weeding the scriptures!
It is a huge responsibility to have Followers. So now I am going through my Twitterings for the last year, the words I muttered to myself in the dark screenlit hours of the night, trying to entertain, well, the notion of someone listening. Trying hard to find something worth keeping, perhaps repeating now for the enlightenment for my 16 FOLLOWERS! But I am hard pressed to find anything worth keeping.
Maybe this one?
Stuffed and semidrunk. Happy and fat. Listening to babys breath. 09:30 PM April 06, 2007
I feel that this is something even Jesus could have said. If he had a newborn daughter, and had just eaten himself silly on roasted lamb at his mother-in-laws house.
Or perhaps this little gem:
All I say is true and false and meaningless. 12:54 AM April 07, 2007
That is pretty clever, and perhaps SHOULD have been said by JC, it sure would have made the bible a little more sensible. But he probably didn’t say it and neighter did I, since it is a quote from the fantastic book Illuminatus.
Besides those two posts, my twitterstream is pretty shallow and, yes, meaningless, and more or less consist of twitterings about movies I was watching at the time, or silly quotes, or different social websites I was testing at the time. Shameful stuff. I have to get my act together.
I wonder if all people who for some reason gets Followers have this problem, trying to take back the funny silly things and fart jokes he probably made in the company of his 12 (haha!) diciples. Perhaps Jesus went into their bags in the middle of the night and stole their notes, perhaps buried the ones he didn’t like in a heap of rubble, like I am considering deleting the most embarrassing moments in my twitterstream now that my colleagues are FOLLOWING me on Twitter
Just a thought
Update 30.03.2008 (23 followers)
This is something you don’t see in your inbox every day, apparantly Senator Barack Obama is now following me (and 19000 + other people) on Twitter. Now I really must remember to behave. Perhaps I shouldn’t have posted that fake Eleanor Roosevelt quote…
Update 02.04.2008 (30 followers):
Twitter is getting press in Norway, lately by jounalist Jan Omdahl at dagbladet.no , who asks if Twitter is the new Facebook. There are over 1 million Norwegian Facebook users, but currently, by the etimates made by NRKbeta using twitdir, the number of users who has registered as Norwegian is a measly 500. But there are probably more, and judging by the number of new people following me, it is about to explode. Cool!
Both Dagbladet and NRKbeta has superb writeup about Twitter, but feel free to read my first test/review of Twitter and why it works so well, apptly titled Why Twitter words / Screw productivity.
Ken Camp states that Less is More and the value of following few people on Twitter. It is a well written piece that a lot of people should read – and then re-read – and then try to understand.
Actually – I believe that it is not the number that is the issue here, it is the quality of the people you follow. This may seems like a no-brainer for old timers for (non-verbal) communication – but it is really not a no-brainer for a lot of people. I have seen the same of Facebook – people collect contacts. Even on LinkedIn some people collect contacts.
In principle I do agree with Ken that quality trumps quantity any time of day. However, there are exception to the rule. I do follow a very few people that are following a couple of thousands people. My reason for following these people are not that I need them to listen to what I have to say. I really do not care if people listen to what I have to say – it is not important for me personally. I do follow these people simply because they provide high quality content.
On the other hand – if people decide to follow me I do sincerely hope that it is because that I contribute good content. That is fine with me. It does not boost my ego – it does not boost my self confidence (yes – I know I am an arrogant pri*k). I contribute because I seriously believe that I have something worth reading. If not, I rather shut up.
One issue is the current crop of Twitter clients (in lack of a better word). Most (all?) clients do not support something as simple as filtering. Unless there are filtering capabilities built into those clients sooner or later people will move on to less crowded services. If I had such capabilities today I could have filters for «friends and family» and then work related matters (which is my primary reason why I use Twitter). I can not ditch my friends and families from my Twitter feed. I also refuse to have more than one Twitter account.
And this means – if you do not want to interact with me, consider not following me.