I like to read some of the posts over at Tech Republic every now and then. Today, I found an article titled Techies: The Top 10 People You Should Follow On Twitter. Difficult SEO inspired grammar aside, the article is about worthwhile people to follow on Twitter if you are a techie.
The article starts by saying the toughest thing to figure out is who to follow. I respectfully disagree. I think the toughest thing to figure out is how to get people to follow you, assuming you aren’t a twenty-something with tons of online friends already.
Be that as it may, he does have a point in that not everyone who uses Twitter is worth listening to, whether on Twitter or not, and some people who are very much worth listening to in other forums are not worth listening to on Twitter.
Who Is Worth Following on Twitter
The catch is that Twitter is a unique venue. There is, of course, the tight character limit. Then, there is the difficult to achieve balance between tweeting too often, and not enough. And there is the all important matter of what to tweet.
Consider someone like Warren Buffet, who, as far as I know, does not participate on Twitter. Mr.. Buffett is obviously worth listening too, but would he be worth following?
The answer depends on how Warren Buffet would use Twitter. If he tweeted exactly 3 times a day about what he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that might be very interesting for some, and very dull for others. Likewise, while some would love hour by hour trading updates, others would consider that too much and not personal enough. Then again, maybe Mr.. Buffet would be one of those people who never really Tweeted anything and just send a stream of re-tweets with links to build up his ad network. (It could happen.)
The real interesting thing about this whole topic is it begs the question, What Makes You Worth Following on Twitter (see tomorrow’s post, or just subscribe to the Best Hubris Feed). There is a fine line between tweeting too often and too little and how many tweets should be about your son and how many about your business? How many should have links to your sites, too other people’s sites?
I’ve developed some pretty workable theories around this concept, so check them out starting tomorrow.
In the meantime, from Mr.. Hiner’s list I have just one of his, Dave Zatz. I’ll check into some of the others, but I get several of them from different sources. For example, I regularly visit Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite. Do I need to get his feed too? Only one way to find out….Opening RSSBandit –> New Feed…
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