Twitter: Where nobody is really *just* a follower

In a matter of a couple of weeks, Conan O’Brien has managed to cause a huge stir, just by signing up for a Twitter account. He’s already up to 670,000 followers, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

I can understand why he’s got so many followers; the guy’s already got fans, and they’re dying to know where he’s going to end up. The question is, does Conan actually use Twitter? I’m gonna go ahead and say no. Why? Because he only follows one person. Just one. I find it doubtful that Conan takes a look at his Twitter feed just to see updates from Sarah Killen (no offense, Sarah).

Perhaps he logs in and takes a look at trending topics. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that he searches for Conan references. But he’s certainly not using Twitter to discuss anything. He’s not engaged in it; he’s just posting little nuggets when he feels like it.

That’s fine, if you’re Conan O’Brien. Or Oprah. Or even Kevin Rose. But what about the rest of us?

Do you feel like you’re tweeting into a void? Do you post questions that don’t get answers? Do you respond to people and never hear back?

That’s okay. Me too.

I’m by no means a Twitter rock star. I have a couple hundred followers, and generally I follow back. That’s just my MO. I’m always hopeful that if you’re following me, we’ll share some common interests, so I’ll give you a shot. Sometimes I look at your timeline first. If it’s filled with porn or inane comments about your lunch, I’m probably going to take a pass. I try to be “social.” I’ll respond when I’m inclined. Unless I get super busy I skim my entire timeline every day. But what I’ve noticed is there are literally a handful of people who will actually “converse” with me. Some of them I know in real life; some only through Twitter. And here’s the thing: The more followers/followees a person has, the less likely they are to respond to you.

Duh, right? Of course, they just might not see your response. They’re popular! They follow a lot of people! They probably have so many responses they couldn’t possibly get to yours too!

Nah. Look, it’s easy enough to get all your @s. And if you aren’t responding, what are you doing?

Fake following. It’s impossible to follow 10,000 people on Twitter. Impossible. It’s not only impossible, but impractical. If you were to try it wouldn’t be fun.

The biggest perpetrators of fake following are “social media experts” and salespeople (sometimes — often — they’re the same). They’re the ones telling you how to get 10,000 followers in two weeks. They’re the ones telling you to hire them to boost your social media presence, because hey!, they’ve got a LOT of followers!

What they count on is that you won’t see how many people they’re following. And that number is usually astronomical, because they’re the types who randomly follow 100 or 1000 people at a time and just see how many followbacks they get.  And then they mistake their follower numbers as “authority” or “influence,” which means they can spam you to death with their blog posts — or just use your status as a follower to prove their own popularity.

Here’s my advice: Be careful out there. Don’t ruin your own Twitter experience by getting caught up in the numbers game. It’s not really about how many people are following you, but about how many people care about what you have to say. It’s not about how many people you follow, but how many people say things that interest you. Keep it legit, and everything will fall into place.

Some great articles on this point:
Hypocritical Mass: The Big Lie About Twitter
Twitter Zombies
Words of, uh wisdom: How to score more Twitter followers

And to keep up with me, subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter. Lol.