Check out this great experiment chronicled on Boris Dinkevich’s blog on technology and what’s wrong with it. According to Boris,

1. A friend used the Twitter APIs to create an account that automatically scanned twitter users and find users who were “most likely” to read his twits.
2. The first pass returned a:
   • 50+ Twit Count (user active)
   • 100 Following Count (might read twits)
   • 50 Follower Count (typical statistic for real users)
3. Everyday it would delete accounts added the previous day that didn’t re-follow and then run the algorithm again to add more users. In a few days, the account (which had not even twitted) had about 300 followers.
4. Then, the friend published a post with a bit.ly link on the newly created account, and his own account which had about 30 followers.

The results? ZERO people from the newly created account clicked the link. In contrast, 13 people of the 30, who were likely his friends and colleagues, clicked the link.

In other words, a large Twitter base means nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Just that there are a bunch of twits out there who want to feel self-important by collecting followers and following people they think are more self-important than they are. And in the long run, the majority of them will abandon the platform as they figure out just how little usefulness it really has. (It’s a fun toy. That’s it. Nothing more). In fact, over 60% of Twitter users will abandon the platform within a month (Nielson.com blog). That’s why I’m Twitter Free. I’d rather spend my time writing real content you might actually want to read instead of writing down every half-formed thought that rambles through my head in 160 characters or less.

Share This on Linked In