Don’t take that title the wrong way. I’m not one of those that thinks you have to have thousands and thousands of followers to consider Twitter valuable. Nor do I really concern myself with which celebrity or team of celebrity PR staff has more followers than the other. For me, it’s quality over quantity.
So, why the title? Well, I recently came to the realization that I’m following a diverse group of tweeps in a few distinct categories. In an effort to wrap my head around just how many people I follow for different reasons, I took some time to revisit my Twitter lists and did a little organizing. From that, I came up with an interesting breakdown of my interests and how Twitter fits in. Let’s have a look, shall we?
The Lists
The lists I have created for my @webnelly account:
- Hawaii, 134 tweeps – Folks that I follow in the Twitter Ohana.
- Maui, 67 tweeps – My pals on the Valley Isle.
- Photog, 38 tweeps – Photographers and other photo services I follow.
- Hockey, 34 tweeps – Keeping tabs on updates from various hockey teams and leagues, and their crazy fans.
- Tech, 22 tweeps – A relatively new list of techie and development folks that I’ll likely be expanding rather quickly.
- Music, 9 tweeps – A handful of musicians that I follow on Twitter, neat if you’re interested in seeing some of what I’m into.
Lastly, I have an IRL list for the users I have met in real life (not the Indy Racing League). Currently 26 handshakes out of 343 following, not too bad.
Now, there is some obvious overlap since some of the people I follow cross multiple boundaries, such as photographers on Maui, etc. I’ve tried to separate the Maui folks from the rest of Hawaii as to not count them twice in those lists, but it’s still interesting to note that at least half of the people I follow are in the 50th state of the union. And believe me, it used to be a higher percentage when I was just starting out. 😛
What It All Means
Not trying to read a whole lot into it, but it ended up being a pretty neat experiment, if nothing else, something to kill 30 minutes organizing everything. As my interests and hobbies evolve, more so the time I have for each, it’s interesting to see how my value and use of Twitter changes. Since my photography is on hold for now and my work on this portfolio site and other WordPress blogs I manage increases, the Photog and Tech list will likely flip-flop in numbers. And it’s crazy right now on the Hockey list with the Stanley Cup finals nearing completion, but that will likely die down over the summer.
By the way, if you’re interested in a better way to manage your lists than just using twitter.com, I did all of this with the latest version of TweetDeck. If you prefer other tools for list management, please drop the name in a reply since I’d like to check them out, too.
So, turning to the other side of the table, what types of topics do the tweeps you follow gravitate around?
