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PG was an early adopter of Twitter and an early unadopter of Twitter.
For him, the Prime/Slime ratio was all wrong and he was not as amused by 99.99% of Twitter users as they were amused by themselves.
PG recognizes that others will have different experiences and information preferences. However, the chart above indicates to PG that Twitter is experiencing a high churn rate. A bit of quick-and-dirty research shows this may be the case:
From Verto (2017 information):
[F]or any digital company, an often-overlooked number is churn rate: the percentage rate at which users of a given service leave that service from one time period to the next. That is to say, it’s the percentage or number of consumers that a given company loses over time.
. . . .
[B]oth Snapchat and the ailing Twitter show churn rates of around 25%, meaning that both platforms have lost nearly a quarter of their user base between Q3 and Q4 2016.
. . . .
While churn is not necessarily a bad thing for all businesses, a high churn rate compared to your competitors can be a troubling sign. For social media and advertising platforms, it can suggest a lack of engagement and loyalty among the user base – and increased consumer dissatisfaction with the platform at large.
Link to the rest at Verto
There is also the question of Twitter bots:
A Twitter bot is a type of bot software that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API. The bot software may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, re-tweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts. The automation of Twitter accounts is governed by a set of automation rules that outline proper and improper uses of automation. Proper usage includes broadcasting helpful information, automatically generating interesting or creative content, and automatically replying to users via direct message.
. . . .
Twitter bots are estimated to create approximately 24% of tweets that are on Twitter.
. . . .
One significant academic study estimated that up to 15% of Twitter users were automated bot accounts.
. . . .
A subset of Twitter bots programmed to complete social tasks played an important role in the United States 2016 Presidential Election. Researchers estimated that pro-Trumpbots generated four tweets for every pro-Clinton automated account and out-tweeted pro-Clinton bots 7:1 on relevant hashtags during the final debate. Deceiving Twitter bots fooled candidates and campaign staffers into retweeting misappropriated quotes and accounts affiliated with incendiary ideals.
. . . .
The majority of Twitter accounts following public figures and brands are often fake or inactive, making the number of Twitter followers a celebrity a difficult metric for gauging popularity.
Link to the rest at Wikipedia
If you Google free twitter followers, PG will point out another element of Twitter. You can pay to become a big shot on Twitter. On the internet, one of PG’s expectations is that whenever something is free, there is a paid version that works evey better.
From iag.me:
Looking to buy Twitter Followers? Or maybe followers onFacebook, Instagram or another social network?
Let me ask you…
What’s more important, 10,000 fans or followers, or 100 who will actually engage with you?
It seems this question isn’t asked too often by a number of people running social media channels who opt to buy their followers in order to boost their numbers.
. . . .
There are plenty of services out there which claim to boost your numbers. Many say they can boost your numbers quickly. Some services offer to do this for free and some require payment. There are a number of different methods that they can employ.
- Aggressive Following Technique. (Twitter Only) By following a large number of people each day, waiting for them to follow you, then unfollow those who don’t follow you back it is possible to artificially increase your followers very quickly. This goes against Twitter’s terms and conditions and so is definitely to be avoided. There is nothing wrong with following or unfollowing a large number of people every now and again, but if Twitter think you are aggressively trying to increase your followers by follower/unfollower churn methods, you are likely to get your account suspended. Note- a service will need you to give permission for it to access your Twitter account in order to follow Twitter accounts
- Zombie Account Following. (Facebook & Twitter) By paying a 3rd party you can get 100s, 1000s of even 10,000s of followers or likes. Generally each supplier has a database of twitter or Facebook “zombie” accounts that they can use to follow or like you. These are usually completely inactive accounts, sometimes with random names with jumbled up letters and numbers.
Link to the rest at iag.me
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Twitter befuddles me. In theory, the idea of choosing a set of interesting people to follow and participating in a forum of folk with similar interests is attractive to me.
In practice, my Twitter life is a mess. There are the corporate folks who blat a party line, even though I know, respect them, and would like to hear what they have to say. Others that post only for attention. I try to eliminate those, but one moment they have something to say and the next they are retweeting some stupid party line.
I am sure that someone knows how to manage Twitter and make it realize its potential, but I have not figured it out.
How do you participate in intelligent conversation without being deluged with drek?
One to one. Elsewhere.
Twitter was conceived as mass publishing (one to millions) and found its niche among PR types. As such it is really meant for fire-and-forget pronouncements like headlines. The platform isn’t really set up for meaningful exchanges (i.e., full paragraphs).
I’m sure you are right Felix.
My corporate marketing buddies(?) love Twitter. Before I retired, they urged me to tweet, but as soon as a conversation got interesting, i.e. had some original ideas, I was urged to dial out. I was given the standard publicist’s advice that saying nothing is safe.
Safe!?? Who wants to be safe? I learned early that safe is the same as mediocre returns, which the wimps love and die defending. Risk is where interesting lurks.
So you are right. Yeah. Twitter is for the PR types.
I would like to say something nasty about Guy Kawasaki, but I met him once and he was okay.
Ever meet Nicholas Negroponte?
From the outside he looks to be even worse than Kawasaki, hard to believe. He might be tolerable in person but his public persona just screams “…even his eyes are brown”.
If you take a little time to set it up, Twitter is an excellent wire service for news. You just need to weed out the time-wasters and trolls.
I was amused to find out I am on 22 blocklists. Never knew I was such an outlaw.
And YA Twitter seems to be slowly devolving into something out of Lord of the Flies. Or possibly Darkness at Noon? Just saw this today:
He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked Young Adult Novelists. Then It Turned on Him. Now His Book Is Cancelled.
Yeah, I’ll probably be pulling the plug. It was guilty pleasure to watch NFL games with Twitter open. But the season’s over now.
Twitter is great for receiving/consumption, but you have to put together lists of the accounts you want to see and look only at the lists. The open feed will drown you.
Twitter is maybe my last social media outlet? *tries to think* Yes, I think it’s basically the last place I do social media, and I HIGHLY CURATE it. And have a twitter manager to help me with posting.
But it’s safe only to be fake there. You can’t say anything real, or they will destroy you. Even the company itself has admitted it feels it has a Moral Calling to quash certain kinds of people. It’s bone-chilling.
How one tweet can ruin your life. If this is “the democratization of justice”, then count me in the anti-democrat party.
This is not democracy. It is mobocracy.
Honestly it’s very Lord of the Flies. But as long as you go into knowing that, you can get something out of it. Not a LOT, mind you, but something. :,
I think I mentioned this to you at NINC, I avoid all social media. It was a great move, my stress levels are much lower. I visit a forum or two for my interactions online, and the occasional post on comment sections like this.
Other than that I just can’t engage. I get so pissed off and bent out of shape over morons…I just can’t. It’s not worth the blood pressure spikes.
Yeah, it’s been best for my health to stay clear.
I do run a Discord server for my patrons on Patreon, but it’s got community rules and I moderate it (with help from a couple of volunteers), and thus it’s a sane place to hang out. That’s where I spend most of my time when I’m online.
I have avoided social media for years, but late last year I made the decision to quit the forums too. Best decision I’ve made for my mental health, ever.
I check out a few blogs each day for my interaction and have reduced my stress levels so much that I can’t even quantify it.
I also set up a discord server where I chat with a few select writers I met during nano a couple of years back. That gives me a bit of a personal connection with some other writers that feels nice without being overwhelming.
I email a lot of people as well, mostly old friends, but it saves me from having to be on Facebook.
I used to like twitter, back in the dark ages when it was a baby. It reminded me a bit of a very active email group. Then it got *too* noisy, and I decided it wasn’t for me. I got out well before the twitter mobs became a big thing and I’m so grateful that I did. That kind of behavior really upsets me and I have a bad habit of saying things I regret when I’m upset. 😀
I’m on Twitter, and there are days when I feel like giving up the whole shooting match as my feed is full of posts that make me think, “Oh dear god.”
So far I’ve not jumped, and probably what I’ll do is wean myself off checking it and only go when I want to psot something.
OTOH why bother?
The influence it has on Main Stream Media (used to be journalism, now just info-tainment) is powerful. The founder and once again CEO did a long interview online w/ Joe Rogan. He didn’t address the tendency of the company to silence conservative accounts, but will in a future interview. It’s an interesting podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mP9OmOFxc4