Mastodon

New Twitter Followers

Send to Kindle

I’ve been using Twitter for a very long time (thanks Jamie, even though you deserted us for a while). πŸ˜‰

I have had it set to IM me (via Jabber) whenever anyone tweets, and forever, that was working. A while ago (quite a while ago), those messages stopped coming. I was able to send tweets via IM, but I never got an update for someone else any longer.

On time, also a long time ago, I turned off the IM channel, then turned it back on, and for a short while (days?) I received tweets via IM again, then they stopped.

Recently, I installed Twhirl (an Adobe AIR fat client for Twitter) so I didn’t care. Then I installed (same day) AlertThingy (also an AIR client). AlertThingy (at first) only attached to FriendFeed stuff, so I still had to launch Twhirl in order to see tweets from people that I am not also a FriendFeed subscriber of. Ugh.

A recent update of AlertThingy (or I missed it originally!) now also includes full Twitter integration, so I no longer have to launch Twhirl.

Anyway, none of that has to do with the title of this post. πŸ˜‰

This morning, I noticed that two of the people that I follow both tweeted that they have seen a big jump in followers. Having nothing to do with that (but having it lodged somewhere in my brain), I logged on to twitter.com for the first time in a very long while.

I accidentally noticed a tiny link on the bottom right hand corner showing 14 new requests to be followed. That was quite surprising. Who knew how long they’ve been sitting there?

So, out of the 14 requests, I knew eight of those people (and approved all of them right away). A ninth person is someone I don’t personally know (or at least I don’t think I do), but he’s a good buddy of two people I do know, so I happily accepted him as well.

That left five strangers. Of them, one seemed to have a very interesting business take in her tweets, so I accepted her. Two seemed to be following over 50K (yes, thousand!) people, so I can safely assume that I’m not all that special to them, and I declined them. The other two I just haven’t decided yet, and I’m letting them sit.

So, I’ve gone from four followers to 14 followers, in a five minute span. Nothing like the one buddy who tweeted this morning that he’s up to 1000 followers!

That said, I keep my tweets private, as I do for my FriendFeed as well. I’m honestly not sure why I do. Everything that I tweet about is personal (no big business secrets to worry about spilling to the world). After the fact, I often blog about what I tweeted about in advance. In other word, my tweets are often “Going to a concert”, followed the next morning by a blog about the concert.

Clearly, the blog is available for all to see, forever, so why not just open up the tweets as well? I don’t know, but since I have zero need/desire for a complete stranger to know (or care) about what I’m about to do, it just makes sense to me.

The blog side is different. I am shocked (and pleased) as to how many people find my posts via normal searches, and I know (hopefully they would agree!) that often my post has answered their exact question (if they have the patience to read my long-windedness). πŸ˜‰

If any of you have strong opinions as to the benefits of opening up my tweets and/or FriendFeed, please feel free to weigh in here.


Posted

in

, ,

by

Comments

13 responses to “New Twitter Followers”

  1. thingles Avatar

    I think that was my tweet. πŸ™‚

    I’m a big fan of not protecting updates in part for this reason. If you are open people can take a look at your Twitter stream and just follow without approval. A nice email arrives to let you know you have a new follower. Works well.

    I’d love to see if Twitter is going through some increased adoption. Hard to know.

    What do you think of FriendFeed? I was enamored with it at first, and I’ve generally just abandoned it. It is just a Twitter echo chamber.

    PS – No link love again? Share the Google Juice! πŸ™‚

  2. hadar Avatar

    Yours was one of the tweets, but it was Dick Hardt who specifically mentioned having 1000 followers. Both of you tweeted the same morning that you’ve had a recent explosion of followers.

    I get that if you’re public, you don’t have to approve people. I just don’t get what the advantage is of having strangers follow you, unless you are promoting something (business, art, etc.).

    As for FriendFeed, in addition to Twitter updates (which I now basically get only through AlertThingy, which doesn’t duplicate them), I also see your Google Reader updates, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc., which I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, so I guess I like the concept. Also, since I added the FriendFeed app in Facebook, people that are friends of mine there see my Twitter updates (and blog posts and comment updates) without having to subscribe or follow me.

    So, I guess I still like it, but I have never advertised my FF to anyone else…

    Not sure about your PS though, so please elaborate! I love link love. πŸ˜‰

  3. thingles Avatar

    I think I might try an experiment. Create a Twitter robot that randomly says things that look like real tweets. Like a Touring robot or something. See how many people follow it, but make it look entirely like a person. Would be interesting.

    The PS was regarding no HREF on my name above. πŸ™‚

  4. hadar Avatar

    I think part of the current explosion in followers (doesn’t apply to me, given that I’m still private) is that Twitter might have implemented something like “follow everyone”. How else can multiple people be following north of 50K people?

    As for the HREF, as long as you create a Disqus profile, you get the link to your name. I see the thingelstad.com link when I hover over your name. Do you not?

  5. hadar Avatar

    Oops. I meant to nest the comment below this one here. Sorry!

  6. Busby SEO Test!!! Avatar

    nice post, thank you for sharing

  7. afallison Avatar
    afallison

    i am really liking disqus. especially the way it integrates twitter. πŸ˜‰

  8. afallison Avatar
    afallison

    i am really liking disqus. especially the way it integrates twitter. πŸ˜‰

  9. air jordan 2 Avatar

    It looks good,I have learn a recruit!
    Recently,I found an excellent online store, the XX are completely various, good quality and cheap price,it’s worth buying! http://www.air-jordan-2.com/

  10. air jordan Avatar

    Stay at home and go sightseeing the world.Thank to the authors carefully describe about travel.Here are some sits about travel products.I hope you can help to recommend a tourist products for this season travel.

  11. air jordan 17 Avatar

    It looks good,I have learn a recruit!
    Recently,I found an excellent online store, the
    sall4.net
    are completely various, good quality and cheap price,it’s worth buying!

  12. air jordan 5 Avatar

    Knowledge gives weight, gives glory to achievement, most people only see the glory, not to weigh the weight!
    http://www.from-sports.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *