My first request is that you don't follow me if you are trying to sell or market something. I consider that SPAM and I will block or report you. Here's why.
Right now marketing organizations and metrics companies are trying to figure out how to measure influence on Twitter. In a nutshell they are trying to provide companies with insight and tools to understand how Twitter is valuable enough to pay to support. I like Twitter. It's important. I support that as a necessary evil. The current thought is that more, qualified followers (i.e. not spam) , more retweets, more @mentions= more influence. This seems like a good beginning. However, there are people who just go on to read and listen. They aren't influential, they are the influenced according to this dynamic. So I need to be able to differentiate between people who follow me to listen, and people who follow me to sell.
Right now marketing organizations and metrics companies are trying to figure out how to measure influence on Twitter. In a nutshell they are trying to provide companies with insight and tools to understand how Twitter is valuable enough to pay to support. I like Twitter. It's important. I support that as a necessary evil. The current thought is that more, qualified followers (i.e. not spam) , more retweets, more @mentions= more influence. This seems like a good beginning. However, there are people who just go on to read and listen. They aren't influential, they are the influenced according to this dynamic. So I need to be able to differentiate between people who follow me to listen, and people who follow me to sell.
According to my @Klout scores I am currently a Broadcaster.Their definition: "You broadcast great content that spreads like wildfire. You are an essential information source in your industry. You have a large and diverse audience that values your content."
I give out +K (Klout) generously to those who influence me daily.
But I limit my followers rigorously and only follow back the ones I actually want to read. I review every follow myself, I read their feeds, blogs if they have them and make a decision. I try to thank every individual who adds me with a personal shout out review of their feed to alert potential new followers to what you have to offer. No auto follow backs for me. I block spam feeds and if you are truly awful I will warn your other followers. Yeah, I'm one of those girl scout, in everybody's business kind of people.
I tend to view my feed as the world's best real time magazine and community with a subscriber of one. I get to hire all the writers and can fire them at will. The cream of the crop are out there for me to choose from. Every interest I have has talented obsessed people writing about it and I can soak up that data, humor, company and conversation to my hearts content. I now pull from that content daily and publish a daily online paper called The Flicker Daily Mail.If you are following me, you will enjoy feedback, comments, re-tweets, and regular interaction. I hope I have something to pass on to you that you can enjoy. I am also curating a few lists as I build up followers that I have vetted and know have great things to add to the conversation. You might find yourself in the paper or on a list if you follow me. :)
I have a philosophy about Twitter that is based on the idea that it is a unique continuing evolution from the technologies that went before it. Because it draws from previous ones, and yet forges new paths it can't be treated or explained the same way as Facebook or even the Web itself.
It is actually more akin to the leap from Internet to Web, from telnet to HTML than anything else I've seen.
I'll say more.
Many make the mistake of thinking that Twitter is a broadcast medium. They sign up, relentlessly pursue followers and proceed to generate information constantly. In some ways they are right. It is a tool that ENABLES broadcast. But it's not solely one way of course. The richest interactions on Twitter are the interactive ones, the back and forth of conversations between people all over the world, known and unknown, about topics that span the globe. It has a unique ability to zoom in on global hotspots as they happen, and thanks to its ability to empower on the ground citizen reporting, it has played a pivotal role in the toppling of regimes and independence movements in Iran, Egypt and Libya. The wider world has yet to fully understand the wider implications that a truly instantly connected planet wide populace actually has.
We've already seen how much harder it is for brutal dictators and even mildly harsh ones to hide their activities now. Syria, Bahrain. These small uprisings and retaliations would not even make the national news if not for the posts of images and frantic personal appeals on Twitter. Our own government has been forced into a transparency they might not have wished for.
Twitter makes borders dissolve. My nation is the nation I live in, and I expect my Twitter posse to be covered. What?! The nice 15 year old Indonesian Muslim girl I follow who draws such beautiful Supernatural fan art is being bombed? I'm calling my congressman. Start a petition! RT, RT! I KNOW that girl. I talk to her every day. She's just a normal kid. She's afraid of her parents. What the heck?
In other words, Twitter is personal.
I hope I get to know you there.
@stjon
http://about.me/st.jon
