follower, groupie or sycophant?
As a courtesy, I’ll say upfront that if you’ve no idea what Twitter is or is all about then this contest I’m about to reference regarding CNN and the actor Ashton Kutcher probably won’t interest you. If you like topical stories or information about social media, it might.
Oprah’s name and that of Britney Spears will come up too. Oh, so NOW you ARE interested!
The deal is that Kutcher challenged CNN and Ted Turner to a race of sorts: be the first person or organization (as CNN is a thing not a person within the noun family) to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Late Thursday night, early Friday morning, Kutcher beat CNN to the 1 million followers mark. Britney Spears tried to ride this race’s coat tails and evidently came in third without so much as breaking a sweat.
As new people are obviously joining Twitter at a staggering rate with no followers, with my 280 followers currently, I did not come in in last place in the Twitter follower race. Phew! You can find me @audioconnell.
Kutcher has promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets if he won. And when he won he showed up a donation check for $100,000 to be donated to the “Malaria No More”‘ fund. That’s nice.
Hitching her wagon to the Twitter train, Oprah announced she opened up a Twitter account and got 30,000+ followers before her first post which is supposed to come during a taping of her show Friday. Bet she sets the record for fastest to reach 1,000,000 followers. I also expect to see the Twitter Fail Whale a whole lot in the coming days.
What does this all mean?
Do these millions of new followers some of whom have to be joining Twitter for the first time have any idea why they are following these folks let alone what the service is and how it can be used? Using Twitter is not rocket science but I sure feel strongly that some of these people now joining Twitter are doing it because Ashton, Oprah or Britney said to and that’s where it will end for many of them.
It feels like one of those cross roads moments or possibly the perfect storm for Twitter. Tons of free publicity from a famous movie star, an international cable news organization and the most popular broadcaster and trendsetter in U.S. daytime television; to get just one of those parties to support them, most companies would be thrilled.
But Twitter is supposed to be about community. One follows other Twitter users because they think there will be interesting discussion based on content, the “name” or the “brand” matters little if nothing interesting is tweeted.
Some of my 280 followers don’t get that. They want to sell me something and think I’ll immediately follow them if they follow me. I don’t. I check their profile and only if it interests me do I follow them. I feel they are not in it for the “community” attitude of Twitter and therefore seem disingenuous to me. If I want a commercial, I’ll watch TV.
What will all these new users mean to social media as these new users get their first taste of it through Twitter and the links that often accompany tweets? Probably broader acceptance if these new users go on to follow more than just Britney, Oprah and Ashton (after all, if Britney, Oprah and Ashton lose interest and tweet less frequently, their followers will have less and less to follow).
Through the links in tweets I’ve been exposed to some interesting resources in social media, marketing, advertising, voice over and my local community that I would not have otherwise found. I’ve also followed some of the people on Twitter because of their content and they offer even more content. That is useful to me. I’ve no real idea if I’m saying anything of use to others…I guess I hope I am but I’m also not losing sleep over it.
I’ve also un-followed people whose content didn’t interest me after a while or those folks who offer nothing more than 140 characters of self-aggrandizing commercials. It’s a bit of a balancing act to gain the content that you want and don’t want on Twitter while not allowing it to be a complete time suck.
I guess as a crossroads moment, it’s an evolution for the service itself and for social media. Sometimes it takes famous peoples’ involvement to help the general public be aware or take the time to learn about new products or services like Twitter and Social Media. As there are no rules per se with Social Media, how these many millions of new users will drive the service is an unknown.
Twitter probably won’t be the same after all this and I guess that’s as it should be.
