Tag Archives: followers

Shaquille O’Neal encounters two Twitter followers at a diner

March 4th, 2009

Let me just start off by saying that I think this is excellent in every way. Shaquille O’Neal, the star Center from the NBA, is on Twitter and actually uses it aright. This you may have known already, but if you aren’t one of his 225,000+ and counting followers yet, now you know and maybe you will be. He’s been asking that his Twitter followers begin to try to meet him “in real life”. His reason? Because of these two guys.

Two fans of Shaq decided to go to a diner in their hometown because Shaq Twittered that he was there. They showed up and, indeed, he was there. Shaq asked, via Twitter, if any Twitter-peeps were in the diner. They raised their hands. Shaq asked them to come over. They took some photos, shook hands, and left. One of the guys wrote about it on their blog (at Shaq’s request no less).

Since then Shaq has asked that people be more brave about coming to say hi. He even said to his followers that they have a special bond in that they are all on Twitter. In fact, at this very moment Shaq is in Miami and giving away two tickets to the first people to come up and touch him.

The fact that this all started at a diner just makes it all the better. I love diners.

Side note: You may follow me on Twitter. I’m cdevroe. The_Real_Colin, if you will.

Why I asked for your URL

February 12th, 2009

A few minutes ago I asked for everyone to please @cdevroe me their blog URL on Twitter. Here’s why.

After a few years of Twitter use I’ve found that, through trial and error, to keep a signal vs. noise balance and keeping the value of Twitter high enough for me to keep using it  - I only follow a very few number of people (52 as of this writing) compared to the number of people that follow me (1,609 as of this writing).

It isn’t that I do not want to follow everyone back. I do. I’m actually pretty interested in the mundane. Whether you are involved in interesting projects, run a cool company, or just have an average life – I want to read about it. But when I tried that, I ended up not being able to keep up with Twitter at all. It was impossible. I missed important Tweets. I eventually ended up completely ignoring Twitter. The same thing happened to me on Flickr. Whenever my family would ask me “Did you see my latest photo on Flickr?” and I’d have to answer that I hadn’t – I knew I had too many Flickr contacts.

So, that is why I asked for everyone’s blog URL. If I can’t follow you on Twitter, I’m going to subscribe to your blog. That is my way of paying you back for following me. If your blog is interesting, well written, about a topic I like – I’ll probably be subscribed for years to come. In fact, I may even link to it or suggest that other’s subscribe!

So, to all of you that responded and gave me your blog’s URL. I’m now subscribed to it and am looking forward to reading what you’re up to. Thanks for following me on Twitter.

If by 800 followers you mean…

March 24th, 2008

My first post to Twitter, and I can’t believe I’m actually confessing this, was about watching Dancing with the Stars with Eliza. That was over a year and a half ago.

As of today I’ve posted over 7,600 updates to Twitter and now have over 800 followers.

When I first saw that I had nearly 800 followers I was surprised that so many people would want to know what I was up to. For the six months or so of Twittering, it was all just nonsense stuff about what I was doing. Then I started at Viddler and so I’d try to keep up with the Viddler community on Twitter through my account. Now, it is a combination of small updates, notifications of new posts to my site, and the occasional conversation.

But then I dug a little deeper and my surprise turned into doubt, which then turned into disappointment.

The 800 followers I have on Twitter is a bit of a misnomer. Taking a look at my followers page, I noticed that a fairly large percentage of the Twitter accounts were “spammy” in nature, web sites, bots, fake celebrities, and presidential candidates. So even though Twitter would have me believe that, every time I post an update, over 800 people are receiving my updates – in reality only half of my “followers” are real people, and probably only half of them watch Twitter with any regularity.

This doesn’t change my opinion of Twitter, its value, or those that are following me (thanks, btw). This sort of thing was bound to happen. It does however, change my thoughts when I see someone with a few thousand followers on Twitter. I begin to wonder how many of those followers are real, and how many really care about following that person.

How many real followers do you have?