Adventures in Twitter

Is it just me, or is Twitter exploding in weird ways? I’ve had heaps of new people following me in the past couple of weeks (my handle is raywelling if anyone who reads this is interested), partly due to me following more people, partly due to blog visitors, and the other part due to goodness knows what. Keeping in mind that my profile clearly shows that I am an Internet content worker based in Sydney, Australia, here are some of the people that have started following me:

  • AOL News
  • Bizarro Grundy, who runs a ‘fictional fighting’ blog (don’t ask)
  • A mentor and trainer based in Birmingham, UK
  • Forexreviewscwg
  • The Florida Strawberry Festival (Did you know that at 10.30 a.m. on Feb 26, Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra will perform free on the Florida Strawberry Festival Soundstage? No, I didn’t think you did.)
  • someone called ‘bouncyti**ies’ (the asterisks are not there because of fear of offending readers, it’s fear of unleashing a stream of spam comments to this blog similar to what I am still receiving for a previous post which used the word ‘p*rn’)

How did these people find me? What moved them to start following me on Twitter? I tried to send a direct message to ‘bouncyti**ies’ earlier today to ask those questions (no really, that was the only reason I was attempting to get into direct contact) and it turns out she (at least I think it’s a she, based on the icon), has had her account suspended due to ’strange activity’. Hmmmm…

Look, I get the principles behind Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. - both parties need to agree there’s a connection before something happens, so only real connections work in those networks. At the same time, I like the fact that I can follow the thought leaders in social media and e-marketing through Twitter without them needing to acknowledge my existence. I think I can even get where miss bouncy was coming from - she was probably preparing to send me a link to an esteemed photographic website. It’s the Florida Strawberry Festival which has me worried. Why me? Why now? And why do I now have this strange hankering for strawberry shortcake?

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Posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 1:34 pm under Australia, Marketing, Technology, e-marketing, social media.

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3 Responses to “Adventures in Twitter”

  1. Kwoff.com Says:
    December 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Zazoo: Adventures in Twitter…

    A tale of one man\’s struggle with the odd people who have started following him on Twitter….

  2. Tim Burrowes Says:
    December 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    I think you’ve just proved the point, Ray.

    I found you on Twitter via following someone’s followers list, and foudn this post after you Twittered about it.

    A pretty good demo of the platform in action…

  3. Zazoo » Blog Archive » More adventures in Twitter; or, Twitter - WTF? Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    [...] Now that I’ve completely confused the issue, I’ll get to my point: 10 weeks ago I wrote a post questioning the business value of Twitter (two posts, actually). Since then, Twitter has really entered the zeitgeist, with global users [...]

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