Buzvia Blog

Followers so easily gained are just as easily lost...

What does the “Pet Rock” have in common with Twitter? The answer is, they are both fads which will soon fall-off into the oblivion of useless products.

Background on my Twitter Test

I began a Twitter test on December 10th to confirm or deny what my gut was telling me. During my test period of about a month, I accumulated around 360 “followers” while “following” a little over a thousand people.

http://blog.buzvia.com/twitter-test

What is Twitter?

Twitter is generally a social networking system like Facebook or Friendster but without any of the features that would make it remotely useful. In fact, if you replaced “followers” with the word “friends”, I would find it hard to tell the two apart other than being crippled by only typing messages up to 140 characters long.

The Social Mind Game

What Twitter has in common with social networks in general is how many friends or followers you have. I think without this little bean counter, very few people would find joy out of either system. Why? Because we are brought-up in a society where the number of “things”, be that friends, money or material objects are seen as a measure of social status. For instance, if I had 5 cars instead of just a motorcycle, people would see me in a very different light. The mind game with social networks is that it’s a “free” (if you don’t value your time) way of accumulating “something” more than somebody else. If I have 400 friends and you have only 20, somehow, it would give me more status, which, to be honest, is crazy logic but true. What I find ultimately sad about these systems is that they not only belittle the true value of a “friend” or “follower” but I suspect far too many people get an artifical boost in self-esteem using these hollow expressions of self-worth.

Gaming Twitter

Let’s get back to Twitter, this system makes MSN one look feature rich! The barriers to entry are GONE because there is nothing to install and it works on all browsers online no matter your system configurations. So at the end of the day, you have an application that is itching to be gamed, and that, after a month, seems to be the “game” with Twitter. How do you get to a thousand followers (ei: indifferent strangers)? Easy, add a bunch of people and delete them a few days later… repeat. I did this 3 times, each time, I tripled my “following” in order to double my “followers”. Now, what is the value to this? NONE! At the end of the day, you have nothing more than a bunch of indifferent people following more indifferent people all trying to get more authority off one another, whose value is just as worthless. This is exactly the same thing as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and the list goes on but at least those systems do provide some nominal value in finding actual, real, lost friends.

Pet Rock VS Twitter

If I had to choose between a Pet Rock or Twitter, I would opt for the Pet Rock because at least  you can throw it at somebody if you are attacked… with Twitter, you are stuck saying “help me” with a link to your webcam of yourself being attacked.

Just to prove my point, here is a very short transcript of what has happened in my Twitter account while I wrote this blog entry… I have nothing personal against these people but I don’t see any value in this… do you?

	thuyphan need to start blogging again half a minute ago from TwitterFox
	lukefrombuzzle Personal Brand Management at buzzle http://tinyurl.com/932p9w 2 minutes ago from web
	lukefrombuzzle Launching something new in 2009 – http://tinyurl.com/932p9w 2 minutes ago from web
	micheleneylon http://www.miniclip.com/gam… silly but addictive 3 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	thomascook Twitter phishing scam spreading – http://zi.ma/843 3 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	lukefrombuzzle Just decided to commit to the WP Remix theme…now there are issues with their server – damn, so excited! 3 minutes ago from web
	DanaFosburgh I think Crosby had Mclean’s jersey over his head before the puck even hit the ice. 4 minutes ago from twhirl
	remarkablogger IM IN UR DM PHISHIN UR PASSWURDZ 5 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	WineDiverGirl is eating olives, pistachios, n smoked gouda with a rockin’ 2006 Cab Franc…oh mamma! 6 minutes ago from web
	fuzzydave might head out soon for a pint – wanna join? 6 minutes ago from twitterrific
	cjow Has anyone heard of Zango? It keeps popping up when I want to watch streaming episodes online. Hesitant abt using it. Safe or no? 6 minutes ago from web
	lookielookies Contributors, Join Renate’s Birthday Giveaway http://aweber.com/b/1vzVJ 7 minutes ago from web
	remarkablogger That twitter phishing thing is actually a rogue AI that will set the apocalypse in motion. Sorry, my bad. 8 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	dreamreaper RT @troyapeterson: http://tinyurl.com/8lonx4 Yes, FB will kill Twitter. Are you kidding? LOL. 9 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	dreamreaper RT @AndroGeek: Android installed and running on an Eee PC in a matter of hours http://tinyurl.com/a94lme While Windows may be more popul 9 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	remarkablogger On a similar note, @rjleaman is the queen of non-profit blogging! 10 minutes ago from TweetDeck
	bnpositive Microsoft Weblog ::: My 3-yr Anniversary at Microsoft Weblog: It was three years ago today .. http://tinyurl.com/8uwa5r 10 minutes ago from twitterfeed
	newmoneyblog Updated my blog with Top Plugin WordPress http://tinyurl.com/94em7o 11 minutes ago from TweetMyBlog
	Geek_News Readers: looking for suggestions for questions to ask Jamie Sorcher “the Gizmo Girl” at CES in Vegas. 12 minutes ago from Power Twitter
	Talkofthatown feels good to take action instead of relaxing 13 minutes ago from web

Older »

RSS

Do you HATE Twitter?

Not at all, at the end of the day, Twitter is just another piece of software whose emotions for or against shouldn’t rise anywhere above or below indifference. My gut was telling me it was a waste of time, I did a month test to see if it was or wasn’t and at the end of the day, it didn’t suit me, my needs nor fill a gap in my life so I ceased using it as of today. Twitter does nothing for me personally, isn’t a source of self-esteem and I don’t care to know the intimate details of how other people live their lives as I got my own to live.

People HATE an outsider

I have visited a few blogs which say only wonderful things about how Twitter has changed their life (???), how it has lead them to new opportunities and find new friends.  I would post my objection to this type of talk and the result? I was called a loser and a failure etc… what I find interesting is that this is the same kinda talk that would come out of a school yard… but this was from adults! I find it fascinating how little people actually grow-up mentally when they reach adulthood. Having a difference of opinion doesn’t make somebody less valuable, actually, it’s an asset! But some people just can’t understand why somebody isn’t thinking the same as them and there is no point in trying to reason with them either.

The Bottom Line

Follow your gut… it will have a better track record than crowd mentality.

Trash builds-up in everybodies life, now is the time to get rid of the virtual kind.

Every years, around the month of December, I start doing a cleaning-up of all the years’ activity… time to take-out the online trash!

Step 1: Delete e-mails

E-mails that are over a year old will most likely never see the light of day again so the first step in cleaning-up your online life is to delete all messages that are over a year old. If you want to further clean things up, delete all e-mails from certain businesses activities, businesses or people you no longer associate with or have an interest in.

Step 2: Delete RSS Feeds

Like shopping with a credit card without any limits, adding RSS feeds is incredibly easy and accumulating a bunch of them over a year that you rarely if ever read can begin to clutter your browser and e-mail accounts (for e-mail subscriptions). Take the time now to run through them quickly, deleting the feeds that don’t even register a hint of thought and those which you no longer wish to follow.

Step 3: Clean-up your bookmarks!

The second most easy thing to accumulate over a year are bookmarks, I honestly cannot count the number of folders, sub-folders and various other systems I use to track them. Many of my bookmark folders have well over a hundred in each… again, time to get rid of the stuff you no longer have an interest or affiliation to.

Step 4: Delete redundant software and files

Alright, you got 4 different web browsers, unless you are a web developer, it’s safe to say you use one or two regularly and forgot about the others… time to go into your control panel and free-up some disk space. Sames goes with multiple productivity softwares, old video games and even files with multiple versions.

Step 5: Delete blog drafts

If you run a blog, you probably have a bunch of versions, drafts, unfinished blogs or things laying around in your WordPress or other blogging software. Delete them.

Step 6: Delete some “friends” from your social networks

I am always astonished by some people having hundreds and even thousands of friends in their social networking site profiles… now is a good time to drop the ones who no longer provide any value to your life in a positive manner or those you don’t even know. Time to trim the fat off your network.

Step 7: Streamline e-mail and hosting providers

If you manage a few websites or have things with multiple hosts, time to migrate everything over to one host and really cut-down on the number of e-mail accounts you have. One good e-mail account with filters does wonders compared to having things run the other way around. Be sure to make sure you are not billed the next month through your credit card from these old hosts btw.

Step 8: Review backup procedures

Alright, your computer and browser are back to their normal speed now that you cleaned-up a lot of junk off of them, now is the time to review your backup systems and procedures. This isn’t sexy nor any fun but a good backup system with your hosting provider AND your hard drives is essential if you don’t want to lose a lot of hard work. Double-check your backups, verify that they are recent and make another one RIGHT NOW.

You will now be ready to hit the ground running when things get crazy again in January!

The Bottom Line

If you haven’t used it for over a year, it probably won’t be used in the future.