Do you want to be microfamous?

There is an excellent article in Wired’s February issue addressing social media and how it can evolve into, well, something quite introverted. The article uses an example of a Ms. Evans. She started using Twitter as a grad student – with an interest in poetry her updates were topical to what she was interested in. As such, her following grew slowly with people who were interested in similar things. Interaction is frequent, people comment on posts, ask questions, Ms. Evans replies – it’s a tight little community.

Then Ms. Evans gets the idea to post a short, 140 character recipe. Next thing you know she has 13,000 followers interested in food – a slight diversion from her original use for Twitter. As the following grows, something interesting happens. When you see a person with 100 followers on Twitter they seem more approachable. You see a person with 20,000 followers, if you do in fact have a question, you tend to presume the person wouldn’t reply to your question if you did happen to ask it. So you don’t…and social media just becomes, well, media.

The concept applies to Facebook as well. Amass a group of 500 ski enthusiasts and you can talk about the best mountains, the best days, post photos, share stories, etc. Let the group grow to 15,000 and suddenly people are selling ski equipment, posting “lost and found” information, etc. Ironically enough, the Facebook group starts to take the form of a dynamic newspaper! The founder of the group questions how he or she should interact with this new organism – there’s no way to cater to everybody!

Take a good look at your social media presence and ask yourself what direction you want to go in. Is it really that valuable to reach 10,000 Twitter followers if you no longer receive feedback? Do you really want to be “microfamous”? After all, celebrities are constantly complaining about all the attention they receive. Popular Twitter users might not make the television news, but one consistency remains,  the larger audience will always be the less forgiving audience.

The basics of Twitter in 2 minutes

Twitter’s growth has been quite exceptional, and maybe you’re wondering what all the hype is about? To put some perspective on the attention Twitter is receiving, take a look at this comparison chart with Twitter.com and Foxsports.com, courtesy of Compete.

The video below is very simplistic, but it conveys the basics of Twitter quite well.

Twellow – Find Twits Near You!

Twellow is a Twitter user directory with two approaches. The first is a directory of Twitter users (Twits) organized into industry categories. This is handy for anyone on Twitter if they’re looking to follow some new people who work in or are interested in a specific topic. It’s also helps you gain new followers when you list and edit your own profile on Twellow.

The second approach is based on location. You can browse through twits by country, province or state. It tracks 5,000+ twits in British Columbia and 12,000+ twits in Washington. You can track it down right to a specific city – my hometown of Kelowna has 127 people listed – not bad for a city with a population of 110,000.

TwitterLocal.net

TwitterLocal.net is a pretty cool tool – helped me find a local programmer. I’m still a Twitter beginner, but services like this add value to Twitter for me.

Now, to drop my Twitter feed onto this site…