I was just reading the article linked below titled “Is Twitter Really that Big?”

It states that “Many users have abandoned their accounts shortly after creating them, and a significant percentage are not showing signs of account activity,  40 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted since their first day on Twitter, Approximately 25 percent of Twitter users are not following anyone, while two-thirds are following less than 10 people”
I think that statistics are almost always faulty and here are a few reasons I think these are misleading.  I personally have 4 different twitter accounts that I use for various personal and business reasons along with 3 others that I “reserved” because they are my name and I don’t want someone else using it and I “ghost” twitter for several of my clients and reserved for them possible both their @myname and @mycompany name and with most I only tweet with the “my company” name.  I’m also slowing teaching them “how to tweet”… yes there is a way to tweet and a say NOT to tweet…
Several of the comments after this article and on people who “Dugg” this article talk about how they hate Twitter and don’t care about people going to get a @starbucks… noone does, and those of us that use Twitter for business and information aren’t tweeting about what color socks we chose or how many shots of espresso we got in our latte…  MOST real users don’t tweet those things.. we post links to our own articles, to interesting posts we’ve read, to news clips, interesting pictures, tornado sightings, road conditions, free donut day, emergencies, requests for help, information, THESE are the things we twitter-folk do…

The second point the article states is “Twitter is used more as a mass medium for receiving information, rather than as a way to interact with others. Proof is shown by evaluating the followers and friends of Twitter users.  More than 1/3 of Twitter users have not posted a single tweet, and almost 80 percent of the users have less than 10 tweets (i.e., while Twitter is billed as a great collaboration tool, a large number of users are there to consume content, not distribute it).”
I say what is wrong with that? Receiving and using information is 1/2 of the equation, and those folks that are directly people to their posts and businesses are HAPPY to have them “consuming content” as this article states.

It goes on to say “Approximately 30 percent of Twitter users do not have any followers, and 80 percent of Twitter users have less than 10 followers (i.e., for many users, their posts are not being widely tracked or read).”

Again, I don’t see the downside of this? those 30 percent could be kids, could be people who signed up but forgot what email they used or forgot to check that email, some people only WANT to interact with 10 people… nothing wrong with that either.. maybe it’s just their small church group, or their AA support group and the 10 of them hide their posts and just interact with each other… that’s what’s so great about Twitter!  It allows you to use it in any way you want to as long as you don’t post porn and don’t annoy others…
Yet more of the statistics state that “50 percent of Twitter users are following more people than they have as followers, and another 30 percent of Twitter users are following the same number of people that are following them (i.e. users are aggressively trying to attract followers by hoping they will “follow back” but have been unsuccessful).”

Yes, that’s true, aggressively following hoards of people and spamming them with .. look at me!!… buy my stuff!!.. Follow me!!! doesn’t work…. Thank GOD! This is again one of the great things about Twitter… you don’t have to “listen” to annoying people… you choose, you pick, you block, you follow, abuse is nipped in the bud almost immediately…  simply press “BLOCK” and this seems to alert the Twitter Illuminati to go and check out that Twitterer and if they are linking to porn, using bad language, have objectionable pictures.. poof! Their account is disabled.
I did go to the Tweet Grade tool that the article below got it’s statistics from and received an “A” I guess that means I know how to use Twitter?  It doesn’t really say what it uses as criteria.. but it’s fun to use anyway.. “@yourwebchick has earned a #TweetGrade of A. http://tweetgrade.com/yourwebchick” Go and see what your twitter grade is here. TWEETGRADE

Twitter was a big deal before Ashton and before Oprah….  who would have thought 10 years ago that we’d be selling stuff online to people we don’t even know.. “EBAY” ;  “CRAIGSLIST”…  posting pictures and messages to our high school friends “MYSPACE” College friends “FACEBOOK”…. Those are still around and TWITTER will be too!

Come join the Twitterific twitters  and follow me there @yourwebchick  If you want to that is!

This article talks about twitter etiquette. If people follow you, what are your responsibilities to them?

Do you HAVE to follow? I have found that I only want to follow those people who are dead on topic for me with either SEO, SEM, Website Design, Blogging or simply those people that are within my state as I enjoy those connections as well. To just follow anyone and everyone that follows you created a huge waste of time for me, and even more things to look at and decide if they are worthy of my time. I am experimenting with having more than one Twitter “face”. I have my @yourwebchick profile for my business interests and @veryhappywife for the more girlie side of me that likes to learn and discuss things like gardening, photography, parenting semi adult, empty nesters, scrapbooking etc. I haven’t spent much time making connections on that one yet so I’ll let you know how my experiment goes.

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