Comments for Cartoon: Follower Addiction

Cartoon: Follower Addiction

2009-04-26T21:03:13Z

The worst virus on Twitter isn't Mikeyy or any of its variants. It's the virulent strain of viral nuttiness that possesses people to jump at any dodgy opportunity to Get Thousands of Followers With Just One Tweet! Half of them are out-and-out Ponzi schemes, and the other half make the first half look reputable.

My modest proposal? Get Twitter to have a setting that allows you to specify the number of followers it will display on your profile. You want 50,000 followers? Key it into the field and hit submit - you got 'em! True, they're completely imaginary, but let's face it - so is any hope that the followers you get in one of these schemes are going to listen to a thing you say. (Unless it's a promise that you can get them even more followers.)

]]> Must run. I have 170,000,000 followers hanging on my every word.

More Noise to Signal

Follow ReadWriteWeb on Twitter

Comment from Adam Green on 2009-04-26

2009-04-26T21:43:20Z

The mass following craze is typified by the Twitter Traffic Machine scam. I won't provide a link, but you can find them. But the real source was people like Jason Calacanis who claimed that there was some huge monetary value in having lots of followers. As with all manias, it is based on a kernel of reality. There is a value in having followers, but they have to be interested in what you are saying.

What I try to do is find followers by making it clear what I am going to be able to deliver if they follow me. If I want to meet a lot of people in legal marketing, for example, I'll write a few posts about this subject, produce a bunch of tweets with tips that would be of interest to this type of reader, and then follow a group of people who have words like legal and lawyer in their bio. This is easy to find with a simple Google search.

I'm not tricking them, or trying to "Get rich quick with no work." I'm looking for potential customers and people I can learn from. This is standard lead generation, which has been around much longer than Twitter.

Comment from John - Christchurch New Zealand on 2009-04-26

2009-04-26T22:02:14Z

Great cartoon !

I'm using a "long tail" strategy on Twitter - me and my follower.

Comment from Phil Stricker on 2009-04-26

2009-04-27T00:08:02Z

I guess it is not the number of followers you have but the value you can get out of interacting with them. If you can keep 300 followers engaged in what you have to say at the right time, it is much easier then blasting out random tweets hoping to catch 300 of 10k followers.

Thoughts?

Comment from Salman on 2009-04-26

2009-04-27T01:19:06Z

That was a nice cartoon. Though I am not that active on twitter but I have seen people using foolish gimmicks to grab more and more followers. It is similar to showing of to your friends the number of 'girl friends' you have though you actually have none!

Comment from Rafi on 2009-04-26

2009-04-27T01:31:05Z

nice post...thanks for the share...i will keep watching for your next post...thanks....

Comment from topwebpost on 2009-04-26

2009-04-27T04:25:15Z

nice stuff

submit your twitter post and get reviews and Traffic

topwebpost.com

thanks

Comment from FovWeb on 2009-04-27

2009-04-27T13:33:25Z

good picture

Comment from erken rezervasyon on 2009-04-27

2009-04-27T13:57:11Z

Thansk

Comment from Melanie Waldman on 2009-04-27

2009-04-27T16:57:58Z

Rob, Phil, and Salman I agree with all of you -- doing anything but actually focusing your energy on Twitter is dodgy, inefficient, and ultimately, sort of lonely and pathetic.

Every day I turn down a Twitter request from someone who appears to be just this side of Bernie Madoff, if you simply replace "investment" with "SEO." When every third Tweet is the equivalent of a "Hang in There" cubicle poster, it's immediately clear that a person has nothing interesting to offer.

Vet potential followers not just by looking at their number of followers, but by visiting their site and scrolling back through a week's worth of Tweets. That's where the real value lies.

A travel blogger who's a latecomer to Twitter, I'm building my community slowly, representing myself as an actual human being in order to attract real human beings. I'm relieved to know the names and objectives of all my 385 followers; it may not yet be tens of thousands, but I truly don't care.

By treating Twitter like a conference of my peers, it's already significantly widened my social and professional world. And that, to me, was the promise of Twitter in the first place.

Comment from FlashTweet on 2009-04-27

2009-04-27T18:49:51Z

Haha... I love this cartoon. I should put my dog on Twitter!

Comment from Rob Cottingham on 2009-04-27

2009-04-28T01:29:01Z

Some great comments up there... and Melanie, sounds like a solid approach to community-building.

I'm a little surprised nobody's here defending these things. (After all, there are supposed to be hundreds of thousands of people willing to join them... right?) I'm tempted to conclude that if you get the web enough to read RWW, you probably aren't about to hop on a pyramid-building exercise. :)

Comment from websites for kids virtual worlds on 2009-04-27

2009-04-28T05:32:48Z

What's the point of having so many followers who are following you for the wrong reason ie. wanting you to follow them back instead of being interested in what you have to say. There is simply no value in that.