Followers do not equate community. Social media necessitates engagement and interaction and the number below your name does not measure either one. Oxford Anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, Ph. D., spoke to AARP magazine’s Hugh Delehanty about social networks, “Robin Dunbar, Ph.D., has concluded that the cognitive power of the human brain limits the size of the social networks we can sustain. In other words, he says, the outside limit for human friendships is roughly 150.” He goes on to note that adding more people to your network will result in experiences similar to watching television, lacking intimacy.
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The lack of intimacy and community dumbs down or diminishes the potential impact and uniqueness of Twitter. A sense of community may have been easier to attain before the April Ashton Kutcher versus CNN extravaganza and Oprah appearance accelerated Twitter’s transformation into a mainstream application. Loyalty and feelings of community are more difficult to attain as the application goes mainstream. The growth isn’t expected to stop with predictions of 26 million users by the end of 2010. This growth is pushing organizations to analyze the type of community they want to create on Twitter and followers are an important part of that community.
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Having too many followers can result in wasted time spent on polite, generic conversations. The @ is dominating Twitter. When you are receiving two to five calls for conversation for every tweet, keeping up is daunting. How many calls are truly meaningful? Ensure yourself that those who follow you are following to engage with you or your brand, not just raise their hands when you take attendance #cyberbathroompassaholic. When you run into those old high school “friends”, the ones you haven’t spoken to in years, an awkward courtesy conversation ensues. After two sentences you have exchanged absolutely no real information. Two days later the only thing you will say is “Oh, I ran into Georgia”, but how many of you use that cellular telephone to extend communication beyond the previously exchanged two sentences? While there is no ethical way to avoid face to face encounters, herein lies the beauty in the cyber social network. Avoid meaningless conversations by keep follower numbers manageable.
Maybe you know who your interactive followers are; maybe you understand the level of intimacy and engagement you have with your “real community”, but how about those active tweeters looking for their next topic or conversation? Do they know? How does it look when you have 3,000,000 followers? Those high numbers may be repelling active tweeters #unintentionaltweetswatter.
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1. Unproductive stalkers: These followers follow and engage, but the topics are inappropriate and the tweets confusing #adultkidspeak. Resulting in wasted time.
2. Phantoms: The nine percent of people who are considered completely inactive or dead people. (In the human realm, considering people you never communicate with or who are deceased in your “community” would land you a multiple personality test, a nice completely white room and possibly a jacket designed by the American Psychological Association.)
3. Spammers: Twitter began deleting them late July, but whenever spotted, delete them instantly.
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In conclusion, we all love to feel important, but bet your importance and impact on the quality of your relationships, not the number of your followers. Clean up your account, before the Twitter gods need to stick a proverbial bar of soap in your account and clean it for you #strictmothers.