I've been motivated to write an update off the back of Jason Calacanis adding me to his Twitter feed. At first, I was quite chuffed, "ooo" I thought, "Jason Calacanis wants to know what I'm up to, how exciting". Ooooh no he doesn't, as I realised upon clicking through to check out his Twitter page. He's link baiting me. Hang on a minute, isn't that a spammer tactic...?
And he's not the only one, there's a whole bunch of them at it. What a load of cobblers.
Surely I can't be the only person who's worked out that it's not how many people follow you, but what you ratio of followers to following is that ranks you as an interesting and popular Tweeter?
If I see someone has got a 1:1 ratio, I can assume that they use Twitter with their close friends, and tend to follow people that also follow them. It's not water tight, but it's a fairly good hypothesis. Similarly, if I get followed by a user who follows more people than is followed by, I can assume that actually they're probably quite interesting, but depending on how high the number differential is, they're not as interesting as their group. Afterall, their group would follow them back otherwise, no? This extends right out to the people following thousands, and being followed by maybe 10. These people I avoid following like the plague.
So, Jason Calacanis with his 17,204 followers just doesn't impress me. He's following 12,302. that makes his ratio a rather limp 1:1.5 give or take. Even if I was to follow him, it's going to be a one way relationship isn't it. There's no way my Tweets are going to make it through his 17,204 at least daily updates on average (I'm guessing here).
Check out someone like Mike Butcher on the other hand, with his 1,103 followers to 335 followings, and you've got a 1:3. I know immediately he must have some really interesting Twitter chat going on. Also, you know that at 335 people Mike is actually following people he wants to know about. Whereas what buy in would I get from a Twitter baiter? None at all.
Final thought aka Thayer Rant: When will people realise the value of social media - especially the so called experts in these fields - it is not about quantity of information or network, it's about quality.
If you're all about the quantity, then you're not a social media mogul, you're an e-marketeer at best, and a spammer at worst. Nobody cares if you're being followed by 17,000 people if you've bribed them with a prize, or offered them sudo friendship. It doesn't mean you're popular, it just means you're desperate, or selling something, or both.
As always, these are my views, and I know that some people won't agree with them.
And he's not the only one, there's a whole bunch of them at it. What a load of cobblers.
Surely I can't be the only person who's worked out that it's not how many people follow you, but what you ratio of followers to following is that ranks you as an interesting and popular Tweeter?
If I see someone has got a 1:1 ratio, I can assume that they use Twitter with their close friends, and tend to follow people that also follow them. It's not water tight, but it's a fairly good hypothesis. Similarly, if I get followed by a user who follows more people than is followed by, I can assume that actually they're probably quite interesting, but depending on how high the number differential is, they're not as interesting as their group. Afterall, their group would follow them back otherwise, no? This extends right out to the people following thousands, and being followed by maybe 10. These people I avoid following like the plague.
So, Jason Calacanis with his 17,204 followers just doesn't impress me. He's following 12,302. that makes his ratio a rather limp 1:1.5 give or take. Even if I was to follow him, it's going to be a one way relationship isn't it. There's no way my Tweets are going to make it through his 17,204 at least daily updates on average (I'm guessing here).
Check out someone like Mike Butcher on the other hand, with his 1,103 followers to 335 followings, and you've got a 1:3. I know immediately he must have some really interesting Twitter chat going on. Also, you know that at 335 people Mike is actually following people he wants to know about. Whereas what buy in would I get from a Twitter baiter? None at all.
Final thought aka Thayer Rant: When will people realise the value of social media - especially the so called experts in these fields - it is not about quantity of information or network, it's about quality.
If you're all about the quantity, then you're not a social media mogul, you're an e-marketeer at best, and a spammer at worst. Nobody cares if you're being followed by 17,000 people if you've bribed them with a prize, or offered them sudo friendship. It doesn't mean you're popular, it just means you're desperate, or selling something, or both.
As always, these are my views, and I know that some people won't agree with them.
It worked! This pleases me greatly. Thank you everyone for indulging me. The super cool thing is it is carrying on whilst I write this, and even people I haven't heard of are @Thayer Mexican Waving :-D
[UPDATE: Thanks to t1mmyb pointing this out - a live link to who's been waving]
Check it out (the early wavers) - read bottom up:
UPDATE wavers:
And thanks to the wavers not in my Twitter stream:
http://twitter.com/benrmatthews
http://twitter.com/almosttwitty
http://twitter.com/bealers
http://twitter.com/t1mmyb
And my reply stream looks pretty funny too - check it out :)
http://flickr.com/photos/thayer18/231152
[UPDATE: Thanks to t1mmyb pointing this out - a live link to who's been waving]
Check it out (the early wavers) - read bottom up:
UPDATE wavers:
And thanks to the wavers not in my Twitter stream:
http://twitter.com/benrmatthews
http://twitter.com/almosttwitty
http://twitter.com/bealers
http://twitter.com/t1mmyb
And my reply stream looks pretty funny too - check it out :)
http://flickr.com/photos/thayer18/231152
Blimey, I actually did it, huzzah! Thanks to the wonderful Chinwag for letting me use their servers to host. 
You can download the report here:
Twitter Survey Report: Feb 2008
Please feel free to send on the report and data, and use it however you wish. All I ask is that you credit me somewhere suitable. Many thanks.
I hope you enjoy it, and here's a sneaky peak:
Thanks to everyone who took part, and passed this round their Twitter stream.
UPDATE - Blogs that are talking about the survey
I'm tracking these via Google Alerts, so if you've done a post and it's not here, just say and I'll add it. Good to see everyone's views on it :-)
You can download the report here:
Twitter Survey Report: Feb 2008
Please feel free to send on the report and data, and use it however you wish. All I ask is that you credit me somewhere suitable. Many thanks.
I hope you enjoy it, and here's a sneaky peak:
- People mainly use Twitter mostly to see what their contacts are up to (50.6%).
- Most respondents to this survey are followed by twice the amount of people (101-200 followers) than they follow themselves (51-100 followers).
- You’re most likely to become un-followed if your Tweets aren’t deemed relevant to your followers
- Half the respondents (48.5%) had Twittered drunk…
- … Yet thankfully most people (65.7%) have never regretted a Twitter post
Thanks to everyone who took part, and passed this round their Twitter stream.
UPDATE - Blogs that are talking about the survey
I'm tracking these via Google Alerts, so if you've done a post and it's not here, just say and I'll add it. Good to see everyone's views on it :-)
Last night I cut down the amount of people I follow. I do this about once a month, after adding people throughout the month. It's something I've always done, and interestingly, every time I do it - it's something that has always caused some grumpiness from a few of those who I stop following.
I don't get this at all. If I stop following you, you are still my friend. This doesn't terminate our relationship, or mean that in any way I like you less. It just means that for now there are other people I am watching who I want to appear in my feed more often. If I follow over 80, in particular when I get close to 100, I find it very hard to track my real life close friends - you know, the ones I know personally, go drinking with etc. So I chop back a bit.
That's not to say I only follow people who are my close personal friends, as that's not true, but I do only follow people that aren't close personal friends if I find what they tweet about very interesting. Not just "not boring" but actually really interesting.
To give you an idea of what I mean, I've had emails from people questioning why I no longer follow them, and then getting grumpy when I tell them. This morning I noticed a Twitter from Paul Walsh:
Do people actually keep count of those following them that closely? It might just be me, but that sounds like, "Thayer deleted me, I'm going to delete her" - it's a bit playground. The word culling seems a bit harsh too - from Dictionary.com:
My personal thoughts are: follow people because they're interesting, and because you enjoy reading their Twitters for whatever reason, don't just follow people so they follow you back, or to proove your mates. That is just silly.
Oh, and by the way - I track "thayer" to my mobile via Twitter, so if I don't follow someone and they talk to me I can still talk back. It just means that I can have a good clean feed that directly shows me the people I want to know about at that moment. Also, I tend to follow and unfollow people frequently, so don't be surprised if I follow you on and off depending on where you are and what you do. I also read feeds of those I don't follow when I get time and want to see what they've been up to.
A closing thought that I saw on Ben Metcalfe's Twitter the other day:
Exactly! And why should Ben have to follow someone just because they're following him?! Aha - it's because sexyseo uses Twitter completely differently from anyone I know:
So, it just goes to show, one persons Twitter does definitely not equal anothers.
Anybody else had any experience of this, either as a deleted followee who's narked or perhaps you have run into trouble by stopping following people yourself?
I don't get this at all. If I stop following you, you are still my friend. This doesn't terminate our relationship, or mean that in any way I like you less. It just means that for now there are other people I am watching who I want to appear in my feed more often. If I follow over 80, in particular when I get close to 100, I find it very hard to track my real life close friends - you know, the ones I know personally, go drinking with etc. So I chop back a bit.
That's not to say I only follow people who are my close personal friends, as that's not true, but I do only follow people that aren't close personal friends if I find what they tweet about very interesting. Not just "not boring" but actually really interesting.
To give you an idea of what I mean, I've had emails from people questioning why I no longer follow them, and then getting grumpy when I tell them. This morning I noticed a Twitter from Paul Walsh:
@thayer reduces her no of feeds and my followers go from 606 to 605. Must do a little culling myself.
Do people actually keep count of those following them that closely? It might just be me, but that sounds like, "Thayer deleted me, I'm going to delete her" - it's a bit playground. The word culling seems a bit harsh too - from Dictionary.com:
CULL n. Something picked out from others, especially something rejected because of inferior quality.
My personal thoughts are: follow people because they're interesting, and because you enjoy reading their Twitters for whatever reason, don't just follow people so they follow you back, or to proove your mates. That is just silly.
Oh, and by the way - I track "thayer" to my mobile via Twitter, so if I don't follow someone and they talk to me I can still talk back. It just means that I can have a good clean feed that directly shows me the people I want to know about at that moment. Also, I tend to follow and unfollow people frequently, so don't be surprised if I follow you on and off depending on where you are and what you do. I also read feeds of those I don't follow when I get time and want to see what they've been up to.
A closing thought that I saw on Ben Metcalfe's Twitter the other day:
@sexyseo sure, I'll add u. But if I followed everyone who followed me I'd be drowned in tweets as I have 750+ followers. My blackberry would melt!
Exactly! And why should Ben have to follow someone just because they're following him?! Aha - it's because sexyseo uses Twitter completely differently from anyone I know:
Time to clean up my Twitter. Who do not follow me, you will be left behind ;)
So, it just goes to show, one persons Twitter does definitely not equal anothers.
Anybody else had any experience of this, either as a deleted followee who's narked or perhaps you have run into trouble by stopping following people yourself?
Okay, so I feel bad. I promised results by today, and it isn't going to happen. There are two reasons for this in my defense, m'lud.
<hangs head in shame and shuffles off />
- I have a family visit tomorrow until Friday. Not just any family visit, but my: sister, her son, her husband and my Mum. This is a lot of family to visit, considering it's the first time I've ever entertained family in London. Eek. Send me good luck vibes. I'm slightly scared about how completely square and nerdy I am going to appear to my 8 year old nephew. He's probably already on web 5.9 and played all the games I own on the hardest levels. I think family is a fairly decent excuse as to not getting my homework done on time - I mean, it's not like my cat ate it, or anything. Did you, Spitz?
- I met a very interesting chap today, mister Richard Nevins from Tipped. He's doing some really interesting research into microbragging. He also gave me a dissertation on Twitter that I would rather like to use parts of for the Twitter survey report - add a bit of meat to its bones, perhaps. Richard has also said he'll be happy to get involved in the next Twitter survey - and he's super academic and brainy, so it will be way better than the finger in the air job I did.
<hangs head in shame and shuffles off />
Well blow me - I didn't expect it to be quite so popular! Which is obviously fantastic news as it means the higher the response, the better the results can be relied on at the end. So far the survey has had just shy of 200 responses, which is great considering I was expecting maybe 30 or so just from my close community! It'd be great to get to 300 by Wednesday when I'm closing it off, so I'll be hunting down Twitter forums and the like to post it on today. Shout if you'd like to suggest anywhere.I also got lots of feedback, mostly positive but also some negative such as the survey being too short, and the questions not being written in a way the respondent would have liked. I wanted to quickly address those points - this survey began life as a free Survey Monkey survey, and as such you're only allowed 10 questions, and 100 responses. Also, I've never done a survey before, so apologies for my lack of knowledge in the area. It was clear that as soon as it started to gain momentum that I should have paid for the survey in the beginning and also worked with other sources to develop it!
So, I'm going to be doing a follow up survey in the next month, working with Nik Butler aka Loudmouthman and anyone else who would like to contribute. Paul Walsh also felt he could do a better survey, so hopefully Paul will help me develop this idea some more too, for phase two. It's great to have an idea and then have the community feedback and want to help develop it further, I'm looking forward to learning.
I've also been asked which client this survey is for, and what the point is. Well, there's no client involved, I just wanted to get this information to share with the community. So, you're all my client on this project! I just felt with so much speculation floating about on how people want to use and receive Tweets, we should add a bit of backrgound to the discussions.
Thanks again to everyone for getting involved and taking part making this a really fun project. Results will be out by Friday, so stay tuned!
Oh, and if you haven't taken it yet, what are you waiting for? :-) Take the survey!
Since posting about Twitter etiquette, there's been mixed views coming back to me from the Twitter-o-sphere. So, I figured, let's put this out to the community at large and find out some facts about how we're all using Twitter.
I'd be super grateful if you could fling this as far and wide as possible, especially on Twitter - I will post all the raw results here in one week, so let's see how far we can get it out there. The more answers, the better data we can all share. I'll even do an executive summary for all of you that just want the highlights :-) Everything that comes from this survey will be free to use by anyone.
So, without further ado - please tell the world - How do you like your Twitter?
I'd be super grateful if you could fling this as far and wide as possible, especially on Twitter - I will post all the raw results here in one week, so let's see how far we can get it out there. The more answers, the better data we can all share. I'll even do an executive summary for all of you that just want the highlights :-) Everything that comes from this survey will be free to use by anyone.
So, without further ado - please tell the world - How do you like your Twitter?
I've been consulting since last October, but haven't got round to calling myself anything other than Thayer Driver. Although this is very to the point, isn't really very fun or good for forms. Or when pitching to clients etc, "Hi, I'm Thayer" receptionist: "What company please?" me: "Um, Thayer Driver inc?" You get the picture.
So I put it to the Twitter community today, and had some good responses. My favourites so far are MediaDriver (sadly already gone) and DigitalDriver (also already gone). It may be worth pointing out here that Driver isn't actually my name either, I'm divorced and never got round to changing my name back. My real name is actually Thayer Chappell :) So trading under my divorced name would be a bit odd.
Funniest name so far Major Thayers (a parody of Major Players if you haven't heard of them).
Here's some stuff that might help someone come up with a good name:
Click here to see the Twitter community's answers :o)
So I put it to the Twitter community today, and had some good responses. My favourites so far are MediaDriver (sadly already gone) and DigitalDriver (also already gone). It may be worth pointing out here that Driver isn't actually my name either, I'm divorced and never got round to changing my name back. My real name is actually Thayer Chappell :) So trading under my divorced name would be a bit odd.
Funniest name so far Major Thayers (a parody of Major Players if you haven't heard of them).
Here's some stuff that might help someone come up with a good name:
- my blog is Tall. Eats a Lot. Talks too much - so, TEAL, TTM, etc maybe?
- Thayer is an anagram of hearty and earthy (haha! how true)
- I consult in digital, web, communities, emerging tech, recruitment and gaming (videogames, not gambling)
Click here to see the Twitter community's answers :o)
As some of my readers will know, I have a bit of an issue with lengthy Twitter conversations between users. Anything over three replies between two people is just showing that the users don't understand the medium, in my eyes. Small converstaions of one or two replies are absolutely fine, and often very interesting, but if two people alone find they're "chatting" on an open channel, it's just yawnsome.
Also Tweet frequency; if someone is posting more than say five an hour (I don't really have an exact figure, it's what feels right or more importantly, wrong) then I get irritated by their dominance on my Twitter feed and tend to un-follow them. To give you an idea, I've unfollowed at least five people I can think of who at one point or other were posting up to 20 Tweets an hour. That's just a flagrant disregard for their followers time and social space online, I'd say.
And finally, this is also true of anyone who *only* uses Twitter as a chat program, ie all their Twitters are @someone. It's just boring, I'm interested in what people are up to, and the occassional questions, comments and thoughts that pop up.
I'm aware that I'm quite militant about my views on Twitter, in the same way that I will only connect on LinkedIn with people I have actually worked with and would recommend, and the way I culled my Facebook "friends" that weren't friends. But I've found that the value of my social network for me is all about the quality, not the quantity. I predict this will also start to become a more widespread view as people's networks grow and grow through evolving social media.
All my views aside though, this post, "Thinking about capillary conversations and choice" is a brilliant beginners through to advanced users guide on how to microblog, it is based on Twitter but I would suggest it is well worth rolling out across all microblogging platforms.
Also Tweet frequency; if someone is posting more than say five an hour (I don't really have an exact figure, it's what feels right or more importantly, wrong) then I get irritated by their dominance on my Twitter feed and tend to un-follow them. To give you an idea, I've unfollowed at least five people I can think of who at one point or other were posting up to 20 Tweets an hour. That's just a flagrant disregard for their followers time and social space online, I'd say.
And finally, this is also true of anyone who *only* uses Twitter as a chat program, ie all their Twitters are @someone. It's just boring, I'm interested in what people are up to, and the occassional questions, comments and thoughts that pop up.
I'm aware that I'm quite militant about my views on Twitter, in the same way that I will only connect on LinkedIn with people I have actually worked with and would recommend, and the way I culled my Facebook "friends" that weren't friends. But I've found that the value of my social network for me is all about the quality, not the quantity. I predict this will also start to become a more widespread view as people's networks grow and grow through evolving social media.
All my views aside though, this post, "Thinking about capillary conversations and choice" is a brilliant beginners through to advanced users guide on how to microblog, it is based on Twitter but I would suggest it is well worth rolling out across all microblogging platforms.
Horay! I went back on Twitter yesterday, after my self imposed month off social media that actually just ended up being a month off Twitter and Facebook.. Yeah, I know, pretty useless really - but it did open my eyes to a few points:
I also gave up drinking in January - and no, contrary to how that sounds (and what I expected) it wasn't actually a boring month! I am hoping to cut back on my drinking to next to nothing over this year. I have had a couple of drinks in the last week but really missed feeling as clear headed as I did when I was long term sober, so I'm going back to not drinking from today, for at least another month.
All in all I'd say the experiment was a really useful exercise; if nothing else it's shown me how completely ingrained social media has become in today's internet, and how much more information you can gain automatically from being wired into the communities and embracing social web trends.
Right, I best get off and invite all those people I culled from my Facebook. If they'll have me back...!
- Avoiding social media is nigh on impossible these days - you'd have to leave the internet as we know it to make sure you didn't see any social media in action
- I don't have to keep using Twitter or spam myself out there to get business, in fact, I got more since shutting down my lifestreaming - although this could be down to actually being free to be approached for business for the first time.
- It's easier to "hear" what other people are saying when you shut up yourself (I might have to implement this to my offline personality too!)
- Twitter is brilliant, and I missed it a lot
- Facebook is really "over" for me, although I am going to keep my profile afterall, as a bucket for all my connections, and it's very useful for the groups - in fact that's the one aspect of it I'd say no other social network site does as well at all
- Plaxo Pulse is my new interest, but nothing on a par with how Facebook first caught me
- I met my long term friends more often
- I had to write a hell of a lot more email to keep in touch with people
I also gave up drinking in January - and no, contrary to how that sounds (and what I expected) it wasn't actually a boring month! I am hoping to cut back on my drinking to next to nothing over this year. I have had a couple of drinks in the last week but really missed feeling as clear headed as I did when I was long term sober, so I'm going back to not drinking from today, for at least another month.All in all I'd say the experiment was a really useful exercise; if nothing else it's shown me how completely ingrained social media has become in today's internet, and how much more information you can gain automatically from being wired into the communities and embracing social web trends.
Right, I best get off and invite all those people I culled from my Facebook. If they'll have me back...!
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