What’s in a Twitter reputation?

I noticed something about Twitter users with huge followings: they typically follow very few people.  Why is this?  Seems to me that they are using Twitter as part of their brand, as a place for them to be, rather than as a tool for them to benefit from.  They’re not there to collect news, or get stock updates, or follow their favorite personalities …they are those personalities.  How do you make this leap?

I did a little study.  Of the top 100 user names on Twitter with the most followers, how many people do they follow?  Here are some interesting stats:

• The top 20 users have an average of 1,015,599 followers (that race to 1 million seems kind of old now, huh?)
• 16 of those users follow less than 500 people themselves
• Statistically, there is no correlation between the number of followers of the top 100 and the number of updates they’ve kicked out (r-squared = -0.06 for the nerds)
• 82 of the top 100 follow less than 0.5% of the number of followers they have
• Those 82 have an average of 616,456 followers while only following an average of 259 people

One user I follow, @doshdosh, writes some excellent stuff about Twitter, and online marketing in general.  I stumbled across @doshdosh when I was searching for relevant Twitter articles to see if I wanted to get on Twitter or not.  While I’d suggest going to the site and consuming all of the articles there (doshdosh.com), there’s a great point about the top personalities on Twitter made in this piece:  

“…these Twitter users built their large audience through their already established popularity. They didn’t start from the ground up: it’s likely that they started with a decent amount of followers and will continue to accumulate them passively through the strength of their reputation or personal brand.”

Of course, you’re saying, you can’t follow more than a few dozen people and have a manageable timeline anyway.  Follow 377,644 people like Britney Spears, and there’s a good chance you can’t read everyone’s updates in your timeline (just guessing).  And there even seems to be a limit of about 2000 followers on Twitter, meant to keep people from mass-following to get mass-followers.

But whether these massively popular users could follow many people or not doesn’t really address what I’m going for here.  It’s about how you perceive someone when they have lots of followers, and follow few people.

Now think about this:  say you’ve never heard of someone (i.e. they’re not a celebrity), and you find their profile on Twitter, and see they have 450,000 followers.  You probably think: “wow, this person is popular.”  But then you look at their “friends”, and see they follow only 200 people… are you more or less likely to follow them?  Does the “strength of their reputation” hinge on how few people they follow?  Is there a snob appeal in saying “I have thousands of followers, and I can do it without following thousands of people”?  And more importantly, does that make you want to be part of that following?

My own personal rule is that if someone doesn’t engage their followers (look at their timeline and look for the “@”; no @’s, no engagement), I don’t bother following them.  I’m the kind of person that likes to interact.  Should it matter if I’m a “big-time personality” on Twitter or not?  I don’t think so.  If I’m interested in your topic and make a pithy comment or ask you an intriguing question, I expect a response.  

But not everyone is that way.  Some follow you to get followed, some just want to listen, and some just want to talk.  I want my Twitter experience to be engaging, informational, and about sharing with others.

 

It’s Prequel season – which movie packs the biggest promise?

It’s “Big Summer Movie” season, which means action movies, remakes, sequels and prequels.  This last weekend, Wolverine grossed $87 million on opening weekend.  A few other notable prequels in the last few years pulls are below:

Miss California v. The Philadelphia Eagles

“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” - William Ellery Channing

This week, 2 challenges in 2 very different arenas were met with unusual fortitude for the circumstance.  One, a Miss America contestant, stood up for her beliefs against gay marriage (video here).  The other, an NFL team, spoke openly against a disgruntled player with unusual directness and strength.

Perez Hilton, noted and openly gay gossip blogger, asked Miss California if all states should allow gay marriage. [Though she didn't directly answer the question,] this is what she said:

Which reality TV show would you want to be on?

Reality TV has essentially defined TV programming (outside of Law & Order) since Real World and Survivor.   There are 2 basic types of reality shows: competitions, and following people’s lives.  Assuming you’re not the kind of person that cameras would follow for money, but you are the kind of person who likes to compete, if you had to be on a competition-based reality show, which would you pick?

DC vs. Marvel vs. Watchmen

There are a lot of comparisons between DC Comics and Marvel comics superheroes.  But now there’s a new show in town that has garnered a lot of attention lately, and I’d like to expand the discussion to include The Watchmen.

If you haven’t seen the movie, synopsis and character descriptions here (apologize for the slow-load site; for text info go here).  The cast of 5 characters mimics the main characteristics of other ‘teams’ of superheroes: an “all-powerful” (Dr. Manhattan), a “brain” (Ozymandias), a “masher” (Comedian), a “skill position” (Rorschach) and a “gadget geek” (Nite Owl).

So, I’ve selected the “top” 5 members of the DC and Marvel teams, to roughly reflect equality in roles. Here are the teams.

DC
Superman
Batman
Green Lantern
Wonder Woman
Hawkman 

Marvel
Spider-Man
Captain America
Iron Man
Wolverine
Hulk

Watchmen
The Comedian
Doctor Manhattan
Nite Owl
Ozymandias (world’s smartest and fastest man)
Rorschach 

In the be-all-end-all match of the century (no doubt on pay-per-view), who wins?

 

UPDATE: I was asked to lay out the potential matchups for each group, and here is how I think everyone lines up. 

I feel like if you take Dr. Manhattan out of the equation, Watchmen don’t have a chance… if you leave him in there, he’s indestructible (except for the fact that he probably wouldn’t fight because he’s so emotionally detached).  Superman is clearly tough to beat, but Batman, Wonder Woman and Hawkman don’t add a whole lot to the lineup.

This is how I see it (winner of each match-up in bold):

Superman v. Captain America v. Dr. Manhattan - uh, all-powerful

Batman v. Spiderman v. Nite Owl - Spidey is too crafty for this matchup of smart alpha-heroes, only one with real superpowers

Green Lantern v. Wolverine v. Comedian - Wolverine v. Comedian would be an amazing matchup, but the claws would win that pairing; I pick Green Lantern because I think he keeps his head above the fray and uses his ring for something stupendous to beat Wolverine

Wonder Woman v. Hulk v. Rorschach - Wonder Woman gets crushed in this one (there was no better place to put her), both because Hulk is huge and because Rorschach has no heart; Hulk ultimately outpowers Rorschach’s unrelenting spirit

Hawkman v. Ironman v. Ozymandias - in the battle of the sophisticated, seeing how Ironman got roughed up in the movie and how Ozymandias took on 2 Watchmen, have to give this one to Ozy in a close match

Score: DC (1), Marvel (2), Watchmen (2)

Tiebreaker: Who has better villains? 

Like my approach? Hate it? Want to call me a nerd? Leave your opinion in the comments.