Twitter is not a numbers game.
Having 50,000 followers does not, in itself, make you valuable or networked.
So why the HELL would anyone BUY followers?
Beats me, but TweepMe seems to think they will
“So, for example, when TweepMe’s 10,000th member joins the community, they will automatically have 9,999 Tweeple following them on Twitter and so will every other TweepMe member.”
For only $8.95 you can start following and be followed by a large number of people you could give a crap less about! Hooray!
And boy, having 9,999 followers who only follow you because they want you to follow them and subsequently view you as nothing more than a number which they were willing to PAY to have… that’s really going to give you an engaged, trustworthy network. RIIIIIIIGHT.
Obviously, having a vast Twitter network is valuable. I can ask my 2,800 followers questions and learn about events and news through them. But these are people from my GEOGRAPHIC AREA. In my INDUSTRY. And other people I have screened PERSONALLY to deem interesting/informative/impressive. And, most important, PEOPLE WITH WHOM I HAVE BUILT STRONG RELATIONSHIPS. I do not auto-follow people back. Which means I have to spend about 45 minutes a day sorting through the 40-50 new followers I get. And it’s worth it to me.
I’d say 50% of people who read this will continue to miss the boat and jump on TweepMe’s current free membership because they think it’s important to have a ton of followers. And the other 50% will unfollow ANYONE who Tweets the TweepMe “free membership” default message: #TweepMe - http://www.tweepme.com - the first 1,000 members receive free lifetime subscriptions”
I know I will.
Is there value in having a large, worthless network on Twitter? While I might not agree with it 100%, I can see the value of connecting with everyone on LinkedIn - in the most direct benefit, this lets you contact other people to whom they are connected for free, without having to pay for InMails and whatnot. But on Twitter - you just crank up the noise and turn down the substance. Thoughts?
Darby says:
Auto-follow is the debbil. I look at follower numbers like golf scores… the lower the number, the more seriously I take the person.
Mar 16, 2009, 7:14 pmsade wolfkitten says:
Well hiya. i’m guessing you found me coz of a similar rant about #TweepMe i put up today. Kewl.
i’m still working thru how i want to use Twitter. i grok using it for the band i manage. i consider using it for my *own* projects as artist/whatever. i’d LIKE to use it as a social network - but i keep picking up people who see #socialmedia and ignore the fact that we have nothing else at all in common; or even if we do, you, Mr Cool Musician Halfway Round the World, aren’t all that likely to have much to say that i, independent starving artist in Ohio, need to hear.
So yeah. Hiya.
Mar 16, 2009, 8:41 pmTweepMe says:
Well Cheryl, looks like you get the exclusive. It looks like we might get shut down before we even get started. I loved how polar the comments were though, some people HATE the idea, while some LOVED it. Really, few were in the middle…
Just to stress though, this service is 100% opt-in so the worry about spam was just a fire-drill. We’re gonna go back to the drawing board and see how we can rework the system to provide a great benefit to ALL Twitter users.
Thanks for checking us out!
Mar 16, 2009, 8:45 pmMary Wehrle says:
My sentiments exactly! I think a lot of people are either missing the boat on the use of twitter or are using their twitter follow numbers to massage their gigantic egos. I love my followers! Each of them is important to me and I don’t auto follow people either. I look at their twitter stream to see if they are going to add something to mine, I then go to the site they have listed in their twitter profile to see if there is anything interesting to read. Most of my followers are local but I do follow people in other parts of the US as well as other countries if I see that I will learn from them. Thanks for posting this. I have seen plenty of other people trying to exploit twitter in other ways just to make a buck.
Mar 16, 2009, 8:51 pmCheryl says:
TweepMe - thanks for taking the time to comment on this post. I can’t agree with the concept of the site as it is, but a possible solution that would get me halfheartily on-board would be to let people pick their location and the Twitter industries that they are in, similar to Twellow.com, and then auto-follow only people in those industries or in their geographic location who have opted into the service.
Mar 16, 2009, 8:52 pmPosts about Crank 2 soundtrack as of March 14, 2009 | Enjolt | Defining the future of the internet! says:
[...] Hero III drops you into the spotlight of the better and best allegorical bedrock concert ever Twitter is not a numbers game, TweepMe - beingcheryl.com 03/16/2009 Twitter is not a numbers game. Having 50,000 followers does not, in [...]
Mar 16, 2009, 9:37 pmTweepMe says:
That’s a great idea Cheryl. We’ll get on it right away!
Mar 16, 2009, 10:17 pmCheryl says:
I am a good idea (TM) LOL
Thanks for listening, TweepMe
Mar 16, 2009, 10:31 pmCan Twitter Survive What Is About to Happen to it? I think that is the wrong question… « POLYMASH says:
[...] everyone would follow everyone else, this become meaningless very quickly. Being Sheryl writes that Twitter is not a numbers game: Is there value in having a large, worthless network on Twitter? While I might not agree with it [...]
Mar 16, 2009, 10:41 pmChristopher Herot says:
When I got follow requests from people with 40,000 followers I figured Twitter was toast. I had the same reaction to TweepMe. What’s the point of having lots of random followers? On the other hand, if TweepMe comes up with a way of finding people with similar interests, maybe it could be useful. I’d love to find a way to connect with other Bostonians, or other people at a conference I am attending. But the first 10,000 people to walk through the door? I can do that by going out to Boston Common and standing on a milk crate.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:56 amDavid Chan says:
Agreed. Twitter is about making meaningful connections. Auto-following people does not give a good starting point to begin building those connections.
Mar 16, 2009, 7:04 amTradingGoddess says:
David Chan,
Your definition of Twitter is your own opinion, not of Twitter. As their question is only “What are you doing?”.
And fyi, Twitter itself makes new subscribers “auto-followers” by pre-checking suggested user boxes and many of the new subscribers are unawae they are even auto-following someone.
Mar 16, 2009, 1:05 pmTradingGoddess says:
What I find interesting about Cheryl’s post is that it seems hypocritical in that she works for http://www.PeopletoMySite.com which is ALL ALBOUT getting more traffic to someone’s website.
lol!
Mar 16, 2009, 1:15 pmCheryl says:
TradingGoddess-
What does the SEO/SEM firm I work for have to do with TweepMe? TweepMe doesn’t increase traffic to your site, it sells you a list of people who will follow you. That’s not marketing, that’s shady. I work for an interactive marketing firm that uses best practices in SEO/SEM to make sure a company can be found by consumers who are searching for them. How the heck are these related?!
Mar 16, 2009, 1:19 pmChicken Hammer says:
Cheryl I understand and agree that following everyone is no different than following no one. But why be so down on those who want to inflate their numbers? Where is the harm or foul in letting them play with Twitter they way they want to play with Twitter?
Mar 16, 2009, 1:45 pmTradingGoddess says:
Cheryl,
So are you saying that anyone who has followers is shady?
TweepMe can help companies to be found, no? Just like your PeopletoMySite.
There are many people onTwitter who vew it as their way to sell and market their ideas and products. Many are not as well known as Zappos or Starbucks. The more “eyeballs” they have, the better chance of them selling something.
And some people don’t have a “site”. They sell things on Craigslist, eBay or Etsy.
This blog post of yours is your own opinion. You can choose to use Twitter how you choose to do so, but being critical (and now worse by calling TweepMe shady) of how others choose to use it is wrong, imo.
Mar 16, 2009, 1:47 pmCheryl says:
Well yeah this blog post is my own opinion. This is my blog. That’s kinda the point.
And I NEVER said the service TweepMe was shady. If you read my post, it’s about how mass following devalues Twitter.
TweepMe won’t help companies be found. Mass following 10,000 people so that 10,000 people will follow you means that no one is paying attention to anyone anymore, everyone’s just trying to spam their message. IMHO.
Mar 16, 2009, 1:53 pmCheryl says:
Chicken Hammer-
People can use the site however they want, but if I start seeing the default #TweepMe Tweets fill up my stream, I’m going to start unfollowing people, similar to the #magpie fiasco - which, if you missed it, was a site that Tweeted ads on your behalf and paid for for each Tweet. Alllll you saw were these stupid #magpie ads. It’s the same sort of thing. Monetizing Twitter. Making money directly through ads. Making money indirectly by having a list of 10,000 people you can spam your product or service to. It’s taking the social out of social media.
That being said, this is clearly just my opinion on this. People can do whatever they want with Twitter, I’m not trying to pass legislation to ban these sorts of sites, I’m just sharing my thoughts. Like I told TweepMe, I think their service, tweeked, could be very useful. I’m not disregarding the idea.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:04 pmLisa Marie Mary says:
The service reminds me very much of the traffic exchanges we used to use in internet marketing. I’ll look at your site, so you’ll look at my site - but, you’re only looking at my site, so I’ll look at your site. Uh…yeah….
Mar 16, 2009, 2:10 pmCheryl says:
Exactly, Lisa!
Mar 16, 2009, 2:11 pmkkreft says:
The key to twitter, seems to me, to follow different people than are following you.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:14 pmIf A follows B, and B follows A, the discussion becomes closed.
However, if A follows B, B follows C, C follows D, etc. back until Z follows A, then interesting posts could potentially make it to every person in the twitterverse.
Of course it’s not this simple. We follow each other for some part, but we always want there to be some people we follow who don’t follow us and vice versa, to keep the message going.
Autofollowing is a problem. A, it creates a closed discussion path. B, the mass numbers. If you have any more than 100 people that you follow and those people tweet regularly, your tweetdeck will be too full for you to catch even 1/2 the tweets. By selecting who you follow, you eliminate the bulk and follow what is most meaningful to you.
And that’s why purchasing followers doesn’t make sense. Will they really care what you tweet? Will you really care what they tweet? Are you really going to make a connection that’s meaningful? Chances are slim.
Darby says:
“Mass following 10,000 people so that 10,000 people will follow you means that no one is paying attention to anyone anymore, everyone’s just trying to spam their message.”
I think that’s the most critical point in all of this. I get overwhelmed when I’m gone for a weekend and have 200+ tweets to catch up on. If I were “following” 10k people, the cacophony would be such that I wouldn’t get ANYTHING out of Twitter. And if the people I’m tweeting at are hearing 10k voices themselves, they probably won’t hear what I’m saying.
The key, ultimately, is to gain followers through the QUALITY of what you provide. Make yourself so that people actually want to filter through the noise and hear what you have to say.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:26 pmTraceRT says:
Twitter is about having a meaningful dialog with people following you and people you follow. Adding a few thousand sockpuppets followers to your account is one of the more useless things I’ve heard of. If those followers aren’t really part of the conversation and have no context to who you are, what you’re about and what you’re interested in, how is that useful? Aside from having a randomly large number next to the Followers tab, of course.
If you really need to see a 5 or 6 digit number there for pissing contest purposes, just write yourself a GreaseMonkey script to replace the Followers number with a stupidly large integer. Screen cap, twitpic it, and revel in the fact that no one really loves you and your life is an empty shell that’s easily replaceable with yet another, albeit somewhat more intricate, GreaseMonkey script.
By the way, SEM/SEO != spam. A side benefit of SEM and SEO is that pages normally become more WAI/ARIA compliant and usually hit at least level 1 ADA compliance when getting tuned, meaning that people with handicaps can more easily access data from the site. You’re adding value to your site while increasing your PageRank and relevance to searches. People hitting your site are more relevant to your business, and you’re more assured that they’ll have access to the content on your site.
(Total Disclosure: I DO NOT work for PTMS or any company related to them.)
For a single person to buy followers… that’s simply idiotic and pointless. For a company to buy followers… well, this idea is not new. Spammers have been doing it for ages - buying and trading e-mail lists.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:39 pmChristopher Herot says:
The beauty of Twitter is it’s simplicity, which allows it to be used for many different purposes, including ones not originally contemplated by the inventors. It would seem that the debate about TweepMe stems from the conflict between two of those purposes. One camp finds Twitter useful because a careful selection of followers increases the relevance of each tweet. The other just wants to assemble a mass audience. The two camps could live in peace except that in its effort to build a mass audience, the second camp devalues what was formerly a useful indicator of the worthiness of a person and their tweets - the number of hard-earned followers someone had. If instead of building an audience by providing useful information or entertainment one can simply purchase followers, then people in the first camp will need to find a new way to determine who to follow. That’s why I don’t like Twitter’s recent practice of “suggesting” people to follow or service such as TweepMe. On the other hand, there is still enough innovation going on around Twitter that someone will figure out a better way - perhaps even TweepMe will evolve into something that’s a net gain for everyone.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:43 pmPam says:
Yeah, I really don’t get this whole idea of “collecting” followers or even buying followers. I agree with what you said… it devalues Twitter, really. I guess it doesn’t really hurt anything if people go off and do this, and those who want to be selective can continue to that. Maybe by expressing your opinion, someone who was new to Twitter (or even not new to it) might stop and think about it… and think about what they can really get out of Twitter.
I thought early on that I should follow everyone back who follows me, to be polite, but as I get more followers I see that really isn’t going to work for me. I can’t reasonably pay attention to that many people and really don’t want to. If someone wants to follow me, that’s great, and I’m flattered (though I don’t truly think that most of them are paying all that much attention to my tweets). Some people I follow are friends, some are funny, some inform me, some work in my field… there are many reasons to follow people and be followed. But for the numbers alone… who REALLY cares? Not me, not you… not most people when it comes down to it.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:55 pmPam says:
(that last comment was from @dieverdog)
Mar 16, 2009, 2:56 pmBlantonious says:
When you have a big crowd, like Twitter does, you end up having all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas about how something should be used. I agree 100% that Twitter is not a numbers game. But thats just me. I want to follow and be followed by the right people. So what is the right people? That depends on you. What are you into? What kind of people do you want to communicate with? and so on. . .
So right now I believe I am following a good mix of what I’m into and hopefully I provide the same value to the people following me. I like to grow things organically, so other than some search tools I really don’t have interest in other ways to gain followers. Although like anything, that is subject to change in the future. In case I run for office.
Mar 16, 2009, 2:59 pmDavid Chan says:
Surprise, surprise, TweepMe has been suspended by Twitter, and now there is a potential security risk involved for those who have given their Twitter credentials away.
See: http://twitter.com/tweepme
Mar 16, 2009, 5:54 pmTweepMe says:
We are now @tweep_me
Mar 16, 2009, 7:59 pmYou’ve Got to Be Tweep’n Kidding Me! « Social Media Snippets says:
[...] not going to echo everything that’s already been said in Cheryl’s assessment of the site, but I will re-emphasize one key [...]
Mar 16, 2009, 1:22 pmbillso says:
Tweepme still sounds like a very bad idea.
Mar 16, 2009, 8:09 pmThe #Twitter #Scam: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About #TweepMe … But Were Afraid to Ask « www.Sozialgeschnatter.de says:
[...] Harrison/Being Cheryl: “Twitter is not a numbers game, TweepMe” (A sensible first look a some twitter-ers’ ranking [...]
Mar 16, 2009, 11:50 pm