SPWD

Over on TechCrunch there is an article by Digg founder Kevin Rose. He talks about how to gain followers, and lots of them (at the time of the article he had over 88,000 followers behind only President Obama).

Hmm…..originally I had started a comment over there, but decided to write about my thoughts on it here and link to the article (link above, or here again).

Maybe I am missing the point of the article, but isn’t social media just that “social”? How social can you really get with 88,000 people?

A Twitter Rock Concert

It’s like a rock concert where 25-50 lucky people get a back stage pass to interact with the band personally and the other 87,950 are a mix of catching good sound and visual (front row) to seeing dots bouncing on a stage and a horrible audio mix bouncing off the rafters (nose bleed section!).

What interaction is there at the concert outside the first row or to those who get the occasional high five from the singer, or the few that get the mic held out to them during a chorus? A bunch of yelling and screaming from 87,950 that you cannot discern a single voice from.

How many @replies are missed from crowd like that on Twitter?

Enough that it takes the term social out of the equation I would think.

If we look at basic web usage, any decent web developer, designer and web site owner has always understood that a high number of visitors is always a good thing. However, a lower number of quality visitors is even better. We also know that quality content that is of interest to visitors is what gains more visitors, more shares and more visibility. If you can gain a high number of quality visitors, then that’s the best.

I kind of think Twitter follows that same basic principle….follow quality and produce quality. The numbers will come about on their own to the proper mix if you have done it right.

Social Is About Quality Interaction

Think of it this way – the 87,950 people at our rock concert that have the potential to scream (in this case Tweet) back are trying to gain the attention of one person, attention that is already being gained and utilized by a small few. At what point is one person so overloaded, especially with all the interactions so many already have online and offline, that they just get glazed over and only pay attention to the backstage pass people, and those in their front row? They may create quality for many, may even get a bit of quality from few but the rest is garbled screaming coming from the crowd – ignored.

Another analogy? Sure. Ok. What if say, Dell or Wal-Mart started a Twitter account for the sole purpose of getting as much exposure and as many followers as possible? People would be outraged and would call it for what it was – a disrespect for the medium used and a disrespect for those that either one of the two entities wish to “communicate with”. You can be for sure that the communication “given” would be much more than what either of the two “received”, which makes it very one sided…..and who likes a one sided conversation?

That’s not quality at all in the social web world we have at our hands right now. Remember, there have been numerous rock bands that really weren’t that great that were able to sell out arenas. They aren’t around anymore, are they? I didn’t think so.