140Char

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?