140Char

I’m sure there’s a linguiphile somewhere who will complain about my use of serendipity, but I’m willing to risk it to illustrate how microblogging not only gives a valuable return on the time invested – but sometimes incredibly quickly.

Like many other social media/technology writers and addicts, I’m also a bit of a stereotypical geek, with a passion for pop culture, comics and videogames. Unlike some though, I’m lucky that one of our London offices is right next door to Forbidden Planet, although it’s not good for my bank balance.

Commuting to work in London last week, I happened to tweet that I was going to try and get through a day of working next door to a comics mecca without spending any money – and within about 2 minutes I was advised to follow @Danacea – marketeer at Forbidden Planet! (The recommendation was via @DigitalMaverick).

Not only has it been great to chat around general geekiness and marketing, but I’ve already had some help tracking down a couple of books I’ve struggled to find – and the store now has a public face I identify with it!

And it’s only one example of getting put in touch with the right person, in a matter of minutes after I posed a question. And although I had an advantage by mainly looking for tech/marketing people, if you look at the sheer number of new people to Twitter every day, it’s becoming easier and easier to find someone for whatever niche you need. I wouldn’t be surprised to find local plumbers etc on there in a matter of weeks and months!

Plus I’m still proudly showing off the brilliantly trashy Karate Kid ‘Sweep the Leg‘ T-shirt I ended up buying when my willpower gave in -

Sadly it’s out of stock online for you mere mortals…

What I think is useful to know

I am a psychologist and I am mostly interested in why we use Twitter: what do we hope to achieve? But hope is a function of our ability to see a goal and road or pathway to the goal. So, I am also interested in how people use Twitter. A good set of numbers or metrics is always a good starting point for seeing what is possible and what is not.

Good reference site

I’ve discovered a blog that presents lots of numbers. A year old post on “types of Twitter users” is interesting.

The article begins with a 2×2 model beloved of management theorists. People with lots of followers and lots of updates are stars. People with lots of followers and few updates are influentials. People with lots of updates and few followers are bots. And finally, people who have few followers and few updates are lurkers. We all started there.

When I look at the scattergrams, I think this 2×2 is forced. It looks to me that there is a very strong correlation between activity and followers.

The more you talk, the more followers you have!

What does this mean for planning your usage?

Do you intend to get bigger and bigger? Do you have an intuitive sense of a good size for you?