The title of this post really says all that I should be saying on the subject, but this whole @oprah first tweet thing being hailed as the second coming has me all riled up, right after Ashton Kutchner (sp?) @aplusk win over @cnnbrk in the race to one million followers. Bleh, feh, barf, yawn… Etc. 
Now don’t get me wrong: Oprah and Ashton are great people, Oprah is using her TV show for good, and Ashton’s and CNN’s use of the one million follower race to fund a charity was awesome.
What I’m up in arms about is more about how they use Twitter to communicate. See, it’s all one-way, from them to us. If you want to maybe be noticed by Ashton or Oprah, you have to use an @reply and address them specially. Plus, they don’t tweet much, or anything interesting, so in my book they have not earned my attention. Now I may be wrong, but Twitter in my humble opinion is all about attention, and about being listened to. In Twitter, you cannot force anyone to listen to you, and you only get attention through having something worthwile to say. You cannot hijack a conversation, and you cannot force yourself into an ongoing communication between other people — Twitter has this wonderful damping mechanism that makes it so that the only people that listen to you are the ones that are interested — people that strongly agree with you or strongly disagree, people that find you entertaining, or people that think you are just plain stupid and that enjoy your stupidity. Whatever your shtick is, only people that want to hear it will, on Twitter.
People that follow celebrity tweeps in the hopes of somehow being noticed by those celebrities are in for a disappointment. Celebrity tweeps are just people like me and you — they are celebrities when they perform to a script. Plus their uniform behavior of not following back is an indication that they themselves have not made this distinction yet. This is not encouraging as an indication of how successful they’re going to be in the long run in transferring their brand to the Twitter medium.
I’m very proud, actually, of the fact that I do not follow any of the people Ms. Winfrey follows, since they all don’t get Twitter.
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April 19th, 2009 at 1:12 am
I’m gonna quote you in Eric Holmlund blog, in post reff to his otherway very intersting survey he recently made.
Why?
Because what you wite here is a part of “you didn’t get it yet” answer to his / others skeptical look at twitter.
And be ready to receive a big gift from me. You’ll be stoned
April 19th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Think I will enjoy following you just to find out what you and your business is all about.
I appreciated the above post regarding twitter’s niche in the big wide web 2.0 world of social networking.
Oprah does help others, although I abhor her godlike niche that she and others have created for herself, and she, readily accepts and has gone on to promote. Very self serving IMHO. One of my tweets commented that she will create so many fail whales in twitter that we should really ask to use use some of the capital to create her own social network - Opritter??
April 19th, 2009 at 7:33 am
This is a bit hypocrytical (in my opinion) when you are touting “EARNING” attention. How is that you are “Earning” attention when you use auto-follow software to attempt to build up your list? I have nothing against being on Twitter to build your business, but you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth when you preach “Earning” attention (and followers) all the while using auto-follow software to build your list.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Well, that may be true for some celebrities, but people like Shaq do indeed interact with their fans.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Thanks Jedi and Ed. I don’t use autofollow. I vet everyone I follow by manually visiting their profile.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I agree that listening is a two-way street. However, even in the real world — it’s all about a popularity contest. Best way to grow on twitter is to always stay positive. Positivity begets more of it.
Insightful post!
April 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
James, you have said something useful, I think. I would add that there may be ways of garnering attention in the short run (perhaps sensationalism for its own sake or software short-cuts) that will not pan out in the long term without also taking action on the “earn it” principle.
You also said of a given tweet that “only people that want to hear it will.” Earning attention on Twitter requires telling people what they want to hear or giving them what they want or meeting their needs–appealing to their self interest, hopefully in a way that can truly benefit them (rather than fostering their addictions, and so on).
In other words, it is possible to engage in lots of good old fashioned work and get nowhere on Twitter. Try tweeting massively and solely on 19th century Toledo tax law or some topic of equal popularity. But without work–consistent work–one cannot garner faithful followers or impact people in the long haul.