Technology and Living in the 21st Century

This week I am going to talk about Twitter so if you don't tweet then I suggest you take a pass on reading this post and do something else.

One thing that I don't care much for is the people who feel the need to turn Twitter into a competition. This past week's race between @aplusk and @cnnbrk was sensational(ized) media and showed what can be done with Twitter (how many people a single person can reach and affect with 140 characters). However, it also demonstrated the ability for two corporation to benefit each other with a little advertising campaign. CNN is a global media corporation and Ashton Kutcher is a Hollywood media corporation. It wasn't so much of a race between Ashton and CNN as it was two media companies promoting each other through Twitter. Now Oprah, Ellen and other media empires have joined in and are gaining more followers in a day than I will ever have following me on Twitter. I think they finally see what you can do with Twitter. You can choose to either follow them or not. I will leave that up to you. Just be warned. Are they genuine? Who's message are they tweeting? Is it their own or is a slick marketing campaign? Time will be the determining factor.

When a person or corporation has close to one million followers, how can they effectively interact with these people. I can't see how unless they have either a large staff to read and respond or they have lots of free time on their hands.

This brings me to Twitter Karma. If these people are genuine, and engage with their followers, they will be rewarded by the interaction and feedback that is not available in any other social media setting. It is like getting all of your followers into a big room and have a huge interactive chat session with the freedom of having everyone say what is on their mind.

Now, this brings me to another type of Tweeter. These are the people that have been building a huge following, engaging and following back. I've even had the pleasure of @reply and DM conversations with some of them. Some conversations are not appropriate for @replies so I prefer to DM. I also don't want to tweet too often otherwise I will lose followers. I really do enjoy following and engaging with these people.

The third and last kind if tweeter is the one that is going to have a negative experience with Twitter Karma.

I have blogged about the different kinds of tweeters that you will run into in the Twittersphere. Now I've come to find a new type of Tweeter who only wants to hear the sound of their own voice and participate in one way communications.

Initially I thought that these people were the real deal as they followed everyone back who followed them. They seems to be engaging (on the surface anyway). But once the number of people following them got into the high tens of thousands, they suddenly stop following all but a few people. I don't get it and I can only hope that Twitter Karma will come back to haunt them. All I can see is a person who turns Twitter into a one way conversation. Maybe they enjoy the sound of their own voice. The only people that I will give the courtesy of this practice are celebrities or those that, as a practice, don't follow many people from the start and tweet about topics that I find interesting.

All I know is that I do my best to engage with the Twittersphere and for those of you that drop all but a few of your followers, I've already unfollowed you.