Couple days ago, a former co-worker/current friend of mine pinged me and told me “I have more Tiwtter followers than you do!” I was startled by it at first, unaware that I was in a competition. Then reflexes kicked in, and I started coming up with ways to double the number of people who receive my tweets. Then, I settled down and reminded myself that I had other things to do.
Next day, in an email thread, a different friend made a joke about wanting to make a movie called “Incomprehensible Twitter Feed: The Kip Voytek Story.” I immediately felt complimented, satisfied and — connected(!) — to my friend. While I am aware that the wit of my tweets is often lacking, I feel like my twitter stream (and flickr stream for that matter) has a quirky, apophenic charm to it. I think it’s genuinely me tweeting, not an audience-seeking me and I like the connections I make with people, however sparse they may be. Some of my tweets fly past most people who read them, sometimes they fly past all of them. But there are enough times in which a tweet sparks a fun, rewarding exchange that I’ve never been more than momentarily tempted to turn it into something other than . . . a way to socialize(!).
But looking at twhirl right now and in the hours after my first friend challenged me to get more followers, I see that the vast majority, I mean the VAST majority, of tweets I receive are really about professional presence and networking: “excellent post on this”, “news flash — you got it from me first”, recounts of articles or conference talks, and recently a spate of “help _______ get to x thousand followers.” It’s often more of a broadcast channel for professional networks and a filter for news than a social device.
Of course, some of this stuff is valuable — I “follow” lots of people I don’t know, and some who I know (but may not paritcularly like) because they help me stay abreast of things. But when I think about what I crave when I open my twitter client — it’s the fun, goofy stuff — as much as, even more than the professional stuff. For example, a bar in my neighborhood, I recommended this awesome soup to a friend recently and when she had it, she ecstatically talked about it . . . that was awesomely fun (though I almost missed it with all the coverage of IxDA09). THAT, I thought, was the point of social media.
So, why bring it up? Mostly because we’re mixing the coffee and the tea when we talk about twitter these days. Twitter is showing some numbers (Stephen Fry, whom I adore; Alltop; Obama) which are getting attention in establishing it as a tool worthy of business consideration and, therefore, marketing dollars. On the other hand, many of the same people are talking about conversations, long-tail communities, tribes, micro-segments, and authentic exchanges between people. Those of us who use Twitter for professional reasons might be missing the powerful dynamic of real, impassioned, fun conversations and simply turning twitter into a broadcast channel. (Seriously, how micro, intimate, genuine can a tweet between 1 person and 5000 be?) Perhaps it is not a social medium at all, but a professional networking tool.
Just for reference, here’s a sample of my twitstream:
Mostly pretentious twaddle, to be sure, but nearly all of them sparked some funny/fun/interesting comment from someone among my 111 twitter friends (I hate followers as a term, it immediately implies something more complex than friends and invites competition) and 490 something FB friends. (And friends is not the right word for all my FB contacts, I’m much more interested in professional networking on FB than linkedIn, mostly cuz linkedin is so boring.)