Lost in the crowd?
I’m constantly amazed by the sheer numbers of people on Twitter that follow you back just to keep you as a number.
Yesterday I reduced the number of people that I was following by over a 1000. That meant wading through the list of people I was following and removing anybody who hadn’t updated recently (not many of them as I regularly run tools to remove people who haven’t tweeted in the past 30 days and gone stale), who offer nothing to the conversation (as in are simply pimping links or affiliate schemes and such, the entire time) and who I simply don’t talk to anymore.
I expected to take a huge hit in my follower numbers after the cull and I wasn’t disappointed by people.
My numbers dropped by over 200.
It’s blindingly obvious that a lot of the poeple I’ve followed over time only followed me back because they were only interested in how awesome it looks to have 30,000 followers and actually have no interest in really talking to people.
The like to talk at people.
I thought that social media was supposed to be a platform for communication or more specifically for conversation. That’s why it’s called “social media” after all.
For a lot of people social media platforms such as Twitter appear to be just another soap box from which to yell their message at the unwashed masses in the hopes that their brand/scheme/message will be heard amongst the background noise.
These people treat platforms like Twitter as if it was advertising on TV and have yet to realize that the smart money is to be made by engaging the audience rather than repeatedly yelling at them in the hopes that something will sink in.
Posted by Paul to Paul O'Flaherty, 2009. | Permalink to After A Little Crowd Control