When thinking about Twitter followers, I am instantly reminded of a story back in college. I was at my friends party and this tiny girl walks in. She smacks her hand down on the make shift bar and yells "I weigh 98 pounds!" All of us looked in horror at the girl not sure who she was, why she was there and most importantly, why she was telling us that she weighed that much. There was no context behind the statement and no reason as to why that would matter to the group. We were all having a good time and didn't care much for her issue at hand. (Luckily she left quickly, grabbed more punch from the party and went on her merry way.)
I get the same feeling when I think about the conversation around the number of Twitter followers people have. Imagine if I walked up to someone and in my introduction said "Hi! I'm Kristin Maverick and I have 2,189 Twitter followers!" I would get CRAZY looks!
I think it used to matter. People cared about numbers as a benchmark to how influential they were within the network. Thousands of people "listening" meant that they were "interested" in the important 140 characters that were sent out on a daily basis.
Now? I think it's changed. When Twitter opened up and celebs became really active on it, more followers started coming my way. I don't even talk with HALF of them. Heck, 3/4 of them. I took a look this morning at some of my followers. A TON are spam. Some are PR related. (I get that as I'm tagged with PR messages) Some are bots that pick up on key words and instant follow. (Example: I tweeted about Smoothie King this morning and now I'm being followed by @smoothieweb---COME. ON.) The number just doesn't matter to me. I value the 463 people I follow and how most of them follow me back. I enjoy that conversation. I don't want to use Twitter as a way to publish my content. People can do that, sure, but don't go boasting about numbers here. Not when 1,000 of these "followers" are in fact computer bots.
Numbers are numbers but if you're not interacting with the right people in a smart matter, what's the point? Quality over quantity. I'd rather people I don't talk with stop following me than follow me. I want to look through the ones that follow me that can offer some interesting conversation.
What do you think?
