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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Is It All a Popularity Contest?

I am relatively new to Twitter and Facebook and have not got many followers and friends. I got to a maximum of just over 100 followers on twitter and was following about 180 people. I did not manage to keep up with the people I was following. The people I
followed were either (1) never tweeting or (2) Tweeting about everything and anything about 100 + times a day (3) Tweeting about things that I am not interested in. I decided to cut back on the people that i follow and began to 'unfollow' them. 


I cut the people I followed from about 180 to under 100. Twitter began making a lot more sense and adding to my daily life with all sorts of tips and tricks from all over the world. Awesome! I then started to lose followers by the day! I was horrified. I went to find out who it was that was bailing from by follower list. I used a great tool ( whounfollowed me ) and found out exactly who it was. Turned out to my surprise, that it was the people would I had unfollowed, that were now unfollowing me!


I began to ask myself "why follow someone just because they follow you?" It was interesting to note that many people using twitter in fact do that! The question is "why?" This tactic is very common and very good to get your numbers up but what is the point? Are you in it for the popularity contest, to be able to say "I have 10 000 followers"? Well, that is great if that is your intention, but you are missing Twitters' main objective!


I am talking here about non corporate twitter users and celebrities. They use twitter to get to the masses and probably do not care who they follow, as long as their message or product goes to as many people as possible.
The same goes for Facebook. If you have 1 000 friends who all are updating their status twice a day - you will not have time to read them all. Facebook, however, poses a different spin on things for me. I did not really love school and certainly did not like many people at school. Why would I have them as friends on Facebook? If they are my friends, they can see exactly what I am up to nowadays and my family etc. Not going to happen.


If you want 10 000 followers and 1 000's of friends - go for it. I am not stopping you. I am not in that boat so I restrict my followers and my friends so the social media I use can enhance my existence!


What are your thoughts on how you use social media

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