How Twitter's Staff Uses Twitter (And Why It Could Cause Problems)
readwriteweb.com
readwriteweb.com
I unfollowed the so-called 'power users' a long time ago. People like Chris Brogan, Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, etc. There was too much noise and not enough signal.
For my own uses, I couldn't possibly follow 1000 people. I would much prefer to follow a smaller number of people and be able to read all their tweets. I currently follow around 300, most of whom tweet a handful of times each day. Following 1000 people who update dozens of times each day doesn't seem like it's scalable. You would either have to ignore 90% of what you saw, or spend the majority of your day watching Twitter.
The fact that Twitter employees use Twitter in the same way that most of their users use Twitter is not worth complaining about. It's exactly what you would expect. The fact that a handful of people (ab)use Twitter and take it to extremes doesn't mean that anyone else needs to.
This sort of article is exactly why tech reporting gets a bad rap.
The author appears unfamiliar with how Twitter actually works pragmatically.
Anyone following more than 100-200 folks on Twitter is likely in the category of "Filthy Marketer."
Anyone routinely posting more than 3-4 times a day is likely also in the FM category, or is a babbler begging to be unfollowed or banished to Facebook.
The Twitter employees are using the tool in its most elegant fashion.
Article = F.
People like should them just go away. Some of us like to keep to ourselves, and choose who we associate with, thank you very much!
I can tell you right now, whatever those people think they're doing on Twitter, it is neither serious nor important.
It frankly seems downright dangerous for people to start depending on their Twitter feeds for critical information, particularly if the organizations disseminating that information start relying on Twitter rather than maintaining their own more fault-tolerant infrastructures (like weather-alert radio or the Emergency Broadcast System). I hope and suspect that Portland OEM is smarter than that, but it seems like it could be dangerously tempting for a budget-constrained agency to try and outsource broadcasting to a totally inappropriate medium.
If anything, twitter is defined by making as open a system as possible, and letting the community decide how to use it. I think that's awesome.
It also makes it completely irrelevant how the employees themselves use it.
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That's very unusual behavior on Twitter. Most people on staff are being followed by more than 1,000 people
Complete non-sequitur
I cannot imagine how anyone with a job manages the kind of usage the author seems to expect at a minimum, unless your job title is "Twitter User". Words are kind of failing me contemplating that point, actually. Who are these people who can afford to use Twitter all day every day, and still somehow remain in the technocracy?