For the past couple of weeks (aside from not writing any blog posts here) I have been lucky enough been taking part in the beta trial of an online app that has a connection to Twitter. Now, I'm not at liberty to speak the name of said app, but that's not the important part.
What I want to talk about is a certain feature this app I'm beta testing has. Technically, I am not giving anything away about this specific app because this function is not native to just this application.
A lot of websites are popping up these days to help people build up their Twitter communities. Some of these allow you to look for people who may be tweeting about things you're interested in. These sites usually allow users to categorize themselves and then be sought out. Some sites I use for this for this are We Follow and Just Tweet It.
On the other side are sites or apps that do what my beta test app does; they will automatically do a mass follow of people for you. All you have to do is click a button and and the program will grab hundreds of of random people and add them to your Twitter follow list.
Here's my beef; I just can't figure out why anyone would want to do this????
Sure some people out there may be playing the numbers game in Twitter, but to me that defeats the whole point. Sure, I'm not the most popular person in the Twitterverse, but I'm ok with that, because most of the people I follow I followed for a reason. I follow people who I'm interested in. People who I think I can have a good conversation with. People who I won't ever talk to, but still like to hear what they have to say. I follow a few different news aggregating accounts on different subjects. Sometimes even a celeb or two because they can be cool or funny (I highly recommend checking out Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down. F'n hilarious!). But, I never follow someone just in hopes that they will follow me back.
I'm not interested in becoming the guy with the most followers on Twitter (although I probably wouldn't be upset about it if it happened). I'd rather connect with people and have meaningful conversations and start friendships.
Social media should be about actually being social, not looking the coolest. And that's all I have to say about that.
40deuce
