At the Tweetup. The panorama app in this shot of the gathering by Chip Oglesby sort of hiccuped when it got to Beth Baldauf. She’s not really two-faced. Also pictured are Lauren Fitzhugh, Brad Warthen, Ryal Curtis, Nettie Britts and Jennifer Bailey Bergen, among others.
It must have been the blog post about The Monkees.
Or maybe it was attending my first Google+/Twitter Lunch Tweetup last week, with some local folks who are, if anything, more into Twitter than I am — including, among others, Chip Oglesby (@cophotog), Lauren Fitzhugh (@laurenfitzhugh), Beth Baldauf (@BethBaldauf), Nettie Britts (@nettie_b), Mandi Engram (@mandiengram) and Clare Morris (@claremorris2).
Anyway, sometime today I passed the 2,000-follower mark. And I did it while following fewer than 600 feeds myself, which is a pretty decent ratio, in my book. (I like to think it’s the quality of my Tweets, but I know that name recognition is a factor).
But… I notice that my growth has slowed down, on account of my deciding to keep the number I follow so low. I reached 1,000 in February 2011, and 1,500 in November of that year, when I was following 637.
Oh, well. I think I’ll keep going for quality rather than quantity. For now.
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Hearing about your “2000 followers” I can’t help thinking of this, hope you won’t be offended 😉
“Take the shoes and follow him!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym-k5viJ7tA
Re some of your fellow Tweeters, many of whom I follow too: the problem with some of them is that their Tweets seem merely to reference each other, and for some of these folks I don’t really know what they do for a living other than Tweet. “Tweeteo ergo sum”? (sorry, I don’t know how to conjugate “to tweet” in Latin).
Actually, I think those were sandals…
Can you wear socks with them?
How many of your Twitter followers are bots? I was getting a ton of bot followers before I cancelled my Twitter account. I still think that Twitter is crap-tastic.
Not too many, I don’t think.
I periodically scan the latest new followers, and they’re usually real people.
I’ve resisted the temptation to follow excessive numbers myself in order to boost my follower numbers, so I think most of the ones I have are actual people deciding one by one to follow me. I’ve followed a slow-growth strategy, going for quality over raw quantity.
But you can look for yourself. Just go to my feed and click on “followers.” Note that I’m up to 2011 now.
Dumb question – but when/how does Twitter become a vehicle for generating income? I’d rather have five good customers then 5,000 followers. Twitter’s like a cable box with a billion channels. Too much useless or temporary information to plow through to get to the good stuff. The most effective business and social interactions are face-to-face. It’s why I travel to wherever my customer is every week rather than work remotely.
I’m not sure that Twitter is/will be a vehicle for generating income. I think it’s an alternative way for narcissistic celebrities to enhance their brand through “direct” correspondence with their fans, and a way for companies to do PR directly. The MSM likes it because it allows well known names to immediately have a strong following, which allows them to continue to be relevant to driving the conversation. It’s mostly an add-on in terms of revenue enhancement. Social scientists and marketers like it because it’s easy to data mine with hashtags.
Glad you are keeping your twitter follower list clean and real. Mine was full of pornographic fem-bots. Therefore, no great loss to shut it down.
What? Don’t you like girls of that… caliber?
I find the porn fembots usually go away if I ignore them (Twitter seems to do a pretty good job of getting rid of them, without my doing anything). And if they don’t, I just think, “Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day! Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!”
There was this woman who followed me for a time, and there didn’t seem to be a porn site associated with her. I never did figure that one out, but I did a lot of wondering. I see now that her account has been suspended.
Just don’t get Mr. Bigglesworth upset. (Puts pinky to lip)
Could the account suspension be related to that bong she is holding? Is that she is holding?
Now I have 2,020 followers.
It’s like once that 2,000 barrier was breached, they started trickling in faster. Not a dam bursting, but a slight acceleration. I just did the math, and if this rate continues, I’ll reach 3,000 in 10 months.
We’ll see…
Is that real math, or math you do as a Tweeter to make yourself feel better?
This kind of math: 25 new followers in less than a week, which gets you 1,000 in less than 10 months.
Even better, I realized after I typed that that I’d gotten 20 since Saturday…
And only one of them looked at all suspicious, in the bot sense…
But Brad, perhaps you have reaped all the followers who would be inclined to do so. ….
Well, it’s certainly slowed down. I just noticed I was at 2,036, and thinking that was great! But then I did the math. At this rate, it will now take me more than a year to reach 3,000.