For the past few weeks I have be pondering the reasons why I follow certain people on Twitter. I have posed this question to you and got an interesting mixed bag of responses. I sincerely wonder what the impetus is for one to follow a stranger on Twitter. Generally, I follow those I find interesting who I’ve seen other friends @reply to on a regular basis. If someone follows me, I look at their stats to make sure they’re not a spammer/bot and then I look at their tweets to see if I find them remotely interesting. Having a few funny tweets is really all you need for me to follow you.
This led me to an interesting, if somewhat narcisisstic thought: Why do people follow me? I am not a Twitter power player by any means, but I do have quite a few people following me who I do not know. I figure that there’s a good portion of those people who are only following me to get me to follow them and up their own count, but I also realize there is a section of my followers who (wait for it!) actually follow me.
That being said, about ten days ago a user sent me a friend request on Twitter. Per my usual, I went to their profile to find a somewhat disturbing sight. This user was only following me and had made only one tweet which read, “Do love.” Although it may come off as self-absorbed that I would initially find this to be pointed at me, I think it’s interesting to note that those stats still stand for this user. They are still only following me and they have only tweeted once, ten days ago. The rational part of me believes that this person may have joined Twitter and then forgot about it. But another part of me recalls when I first joined Twitter. I did not send just one friend request out and then leave.
So tell me your thoughts on this situation. Am I being irrational? Over reacting? I haven’t made any assessment of this user other than they may actually KNOW me.
Plurk is a new micro-blogging website that has come into vogue in the last week or so. A very similar service to Twitter (and touted by some to be a “Twitter Killer”), Plurk allows users to publish short messages of 140 characters or less. Although these two services are quite similar it is in their distinct differences that I believe ensures Plurk will not be the service to dethrone Twitter.
The major difference between Plurk and Twitter is the way each service presents messages to users. Twitter uses a very straightforward blog-like vertical model. Each new tweet is stacked on top of an earlier tweet. Plurk, however, uses a horizontal timeline approach. Twitter’s vertical approach is not only more familiar to users, but even Plurk admits its horizontal timeline can easily become overwhelming to users.
One of the keys to Twitter’s success was in it’s utter simplicity. Twitter provides a very simple mode to message friends about what you are doing and allows for the user to easily keep track of what other users are up to. Plurk has created a much more difficult system that relies more on a gimmick than anything else. The timeline is hard to follow, especially if Plurkers were to publish messages at the same rate as they do on Twitter.
Another feature Plurk has added is “karma.” Basically, by replying to messages and inviting friends to the service you gain karma points. The more karma points you have, the more features are opened up on the website. I found this to be a significant turn off. It was as though Plurk didn’t feel it had enough appeal, so the service tried to lock you in by unlocking features as you use the service more. I couldn’t create my short bio on the website without enough karma!
Although these two features will definitely turn off many users, I think the clinch pin is the ubiquity Twitter already has on the micro-blogging market. Plurk just cannot compete with that, regardless of how frustrated users are with Twitter. On a recent Net@Night episode, Amber MacArthur mentioned that she has received so many Plurk invitations unlike when Twitter started and she was getting only a few invitations to that service. She used this fact to show the imminent popularity of Plurk over Twitter (or at least that was the implication I inferred). This implication amazed me. Occam’s razor would tell you that when Twitter debuted, micro-blogging was very new (still is) and not many people knew about it. Twitter has revolutionized and popularized the micro-blogging genre, thus increased invitations to new micro-blogging services.
The one thing, however, Plurk does right is in the way the service handles replies. Conversations are much easier to follow on Plurk because they are grouped together. Twitter’s reply interface is significantly harder to follow. It relies on users all being friends with each other and able to read each other’s tweets. If I am not following a certain user’s updates, I may lose an entire fold to a conversation. (It is important to note that fellow micro-blogging service Pownce already has a great conversation threading feature.)
Plurk may be popular for a month or two, but unless they can give users an easy interface and incredible uptime, there is no way Plurk will be any kind of Twitter rival (let alone a Twitter killer). Plurk will retain its core set of users, no doubt, but I doubt it will garner any sort of long lasting popularity. In my opinion, the service would be much better off becoming an alternative view to Twitter. Plurk was coded and prepared to scale, perhaps they could join forces with the Twitter folks rather than trying to compete with them.
Twitter is a microblogging client that allows users to make updates (tweets) in 140 characters or less and view other users’ tweets, as well. The networking aspect of Twitter is far superior to that of most other social networks insofar as you can follow whomever you desire without feeling “creepy.”
That being said, each user has a very different reason for following who they follow. Some decide to only read the updates of various cewebrities. Whereas others stick to their own niche of friends. In my case, there weren’t many people who I knew on Twitter, so I ended up following a few cewebrities and a two or three people I (sort of) knew and then branched out slowly from there. I question some of the depth of the relationships I’ve forged through Twitter but, admittedly, it has proven to be a great networking tool for me.
As my networking on Twitter grew and my various relationships there flourished, I began using the service more and more. I now jump into various conversations and get replies to questions posed in my tweets. If you look at the following graph, you will see that although I have been on Twitter since May 2007, my use spiked just this past March. I am now a regular twitterer receiving updates through SMS and my favorite Twitter client, Twhirl.
My experiences with Twitter haven’t all been good. Twitter frequently goes down. This issue with scaling has become so prevalent that websites such as Is Twitter Down have been created to allow users to, well, find out if Twitter is experiencing downtime. Nonetheless, Twitter is gaining popularity and is picking up more casual users rather than just the core of tech enthusiasts who adopted the service early on. The service has a lot of growing to do and must learn to scale in order for that growth to persist.
Questions of the Day:
How do you choose who you follow? Do you follow everyone who follows you? Do you keep your tweets private? What is your Twitter experience and how do you think it can be improved?
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