To follow or not to follow…
Its certainly a week of heavy blogging for me, two posts in less than 10 days, and both of an enormous social importance!
I’m inspired to share more inane observations, ask more pointless questions, and drive to the real “issues” if not simply as a result of the masses of feedback I received after the last blog entry.
The question on today’s menu of irreverence is: How, who and why do I, or should I, follow people on Twitter.
A quick background:
I’m only a recent (6 months or so) user of Twitter. I was encouraged to sign up on the Mactalk forum based on this post. After signing up I did post and ask, “so whats the protocol, do I add people and let them know, do they add me and let me know, who do I know I want to follow, or not?”. To be honest the response I got was pretty random - “vice versa”. Still to this day I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.
So now that Im a semi seasoned user I thought I would put a few prevailing questions out there, maybe there is at least one other person on the planet, who will happen to read this post and yell out the word “Bingo” as their subconscious triggers the “Me to” reaction.
To the questions:
First to the how. Its not so much a question of how do I physically add someone, shit if I couldn’t do that I may as well pack up the blog and go back to being a porn star. Rather I mean how in the sense of how do I contemplate adding people. When I meet people online that seem interesting should I enquire as to their Twitter participation status? I cant really picture that conversation seeming at all normal. Lets be honest to, its highly likely that on Twitter they will turn out to be nothing like what they seemed in the broader Internet world (how weird was that statement).
Should I survey the global twitter posts for interesting people? Already I hear the crowd chant “Looser”, and, well yes, that would be true if that was what I was in to, which I’m not - reminds me of this beautiful song though: If you’re into it?.
I guess I could use my current Twitter friends as mini relevance ranking engines, surveying their followers and those they follow, but the fundamental flaw there is that even when I examine my current list of people I follow, who mind you were only randomly added during my initial sign up to Twitter, they are more different from each other than they have any similarities.
I think what I find really challenging here is the lack of preordained, predetermined structure. Nobody’s a member of anything, linked to some group, listed in a directory or ranked. They are all just randomly connected, and there’s something really strange about that, and I’m not sure why I feel like that.
One thought I had was perhaps I’m to be classified (see previous blog entry) in the Internet generation that has grown up with some form of order. I search Google, I get results, ranked from most relevant to least relevant. I join an online social network and I connect to people and must decide how I know them during the connection activity. Yet with Twitter I just randomly follow anyone, and they randomly might follow me.
Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that I am finding Twitter posts more interesting than facebook status. What the hell is with that?!? I don’t even know anyone in my Twitter follow list and I’m more inclined now to jump onto Twitterrific on the iPhone than facebook on any device.
There is something in this ladies and gents, and if any of you are a Sociologist, Psychologist, Psychiatrist or perhaps something similar with a “gist/rist” at the end of your title I would love to know what it is that’s so compelling about randomness from strangers over the daily movements, feelings and thoughts of friends, most of whom I know in real life.
This really then drives to the “why” question. Why follow anyone at all? Rather than speculate Ill simply offer the following experience. On my follow list I have a range of people. From what I can gather I have a small number of females (i.e. 1) and a range of blokes, some I know from other sites, most I don’t. A small number of people I follow Ive somehow discovered on Twitter itself. Of the list of people I follow there are 2 guys (i presume anyway) who provide me infinite laughs, information, links, news and other such entertainment. Ive also got guys that share pretty personal feelings and people who are quite open about their current activities. Some post once a week, others post 100 times a day.
And here’s the strange thing…
Somehow my mind has concluded that this is the right mix of people to know, that Ive somehow created a small secular group of uniqueness and that I couldn’t or shouldn’t contemplate disrupting in its perfectly balanced ecosystem!
IS THAT F*&$%#%$ UP OR WHAT! 
So here’s my brain telling me that adding more people would not be a good thing, it might disrupt the force, unbalance the matrix. There are no rules or instructions to determine who to add and so here I am, stuck with those I have added so far, unwilling to resolve the Twitter follower expansion objective and questioning how I got here, and where to next.
As Brett puts it so eloquently in the The Bowie Song:
“It’s a chicken eggy thing”
Out!
Tags: facebook, Internet, subconscious, Twitter
One Response to “To follow or not to follow…”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Me to!
I’ve decided with Twitter you have to just let it happen to you, don’t resist the urge to expand your following to everybody and anybody. You can always cull later.
Keep up the great posts Matt, love reading your insightfull commentary
Lucy