I am a fickle Twitter user. I am probably considered to be a “power user” because I follow 200 people, but that number changes on a daily basis because I like to keep my feed fairly clean and follow people on a trial basis. I have very limited patience for what I deem to be “bad twitterers”.
I have to generally say that when I divide up the people that I follow on Twitter, they end up in 5 categories.
Friends, Entrepreneurs, Brands, Celebrities and News
You could probably simplify this down to inner circle, outer circle, far outer circle – but I prefer to put a name to the faces.
So what do I enjoy reading most on twitter generally ends up being different for all of these groups.
Friends
LIKE: To hear where my friends are, what they are doing, even their stupid thoughts. I trust their links and most of the time will bother to click through to see what they are showing me. I like to reply to them and even send direct messages.
DON’T LIKE: Boring things like quotes from Mark Twain or the history of the Internet, but I will generally not unfollow them out of loyalty.
Entrepreneurs (aka business stuff)
LIKE: Links to things they are working on or articles that they deem interesting in the context of business.
NOT LIKE: Don’t care to hear about who they ran into on the street, what they ate for dinner or how cool they think they are.
Brands
LIKE: Insider tips such as when they are having sales, adding new features or releasing product. I also like to read when they have some interesting news or funny tidbits about the interworking of their company.
DON’T LIKE: When a brand tells me what they ate for lunch. This is weird to me because the voice on the other end of the line should be something like the Wizard of Oz and stick to details about the company.
Celebrities
DON’T LIKE: I have pretty much stopped following most celebrities because I find that they are more celebretards. As if I care what Paris thinks about during the day…
LIKE: I only like funny celebrities who don’t overpost.
News
LIKE: Just stick to the news folks. I probably have about the least amount of issue with the news feeds, they are typically pretty straightforward.
I think that the jist of this post is for people to try to understand what column you fall into for most of your followers and try to stick to the content that they might be most interested in. I, myself, mainly post for friends and other geeks so it is a mishmash and could generally be considered to be bad tweets – depending on what people read them for.
/end random thought of the day
