I’m a Twitter snob too!

Twitter is a complete time-sink with very few business applications (that I can see) but it is a whole lot of fun.

As a result, I’m spending more and more of my time over on my Twitter account where I, in no particular order:

• Post interesting links
• Talk about pop culture
• Give some sort of commentary on how my beloved Liverpool are doing (including “breaking” the Twitter formatting with 140 character long celebrations. no spaces.)
• Banter with my online friends and colleagues
• Ask for (and sometimes even get) stats/research/examples/lunch suggestions

But I’m a snob. I follow people I find interesting and who I want to stay connected with. I try to keep the people I’m following to under 100 and I don’t follow other people just so they’ll follow me back.

For some reason, about 500 people have signed up to see what’s up in my life - which is a bit confusing/disconcerting. I’m not even interesting enough for my wife to want to know what’s going on with me, or even, and this is depressing, when Liverpool score.

I’m flattered by the attention and I do click through to every new follower’s profile to see who they are and whether I want to follow them. For me, following them is a completely arbitrary decision based on any number of utterly subjective factors most of which are probably too facile to even consider codifying.

However, if you really, really, really do want me to follow you, all’s not lost. Twitter means you can see what I’m doing and by inserting the simple “@edlee” you can direct your update/message/link to me. It’s a conversation, so let’s converse!

I’ve started following a good few people this way and uncovered some interesting people this way - it’s just that I won’t follow people just because they follow me. Sorry.

More on being a Twitter Snob

Mitch Joel is a Twitter snob.

This guy’s Twitter etiquette is absurd.

Does Twitter have business benefits?

Colin Carmichael can see the business benefits of Twitter. I can see the business benefit of having a “status” (a la Facebook) associated with your bio/contact details within your company’s intranet but,I can’t see the conversational nature of Twitter, specifically, scaling very well - especially in an organization as large as Fleishman-Hillard (c2,600 employees). For my money, all the “@s” would render such a system utterly useless - I’d look up what a colleague in London or Hong Kong was doing, to see whether I could call them and see them deep in a conversation with another colleague about whether, for example, Peep Show is better than Big Train or the Mighty Boosh.

[Disclosure, Super Channel, the TV network that carries Peep Show in Canada is a client][Double disclosure, Peep Show >>> Big Train]

Not so useful as seeing a Facebook style status update - Ed’s colleague is on vacation rather than getting an erstwhile Out Of Office notification.

However, as with all new social media, Twitter is worth following - or at least monitoring.

Tags: twitter snob social media

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Explaining Micro-blogging with Saturday Night Live
• Paull Young steals
• Should “The Media” embrace “Social Media”?
• Twitter, more than “What are you doing?”