Good morning all,
In “The Trouble with Tribbles,” the USS Enterprise is overrun with adorable, fuzzy, seemingly benign creatures that multiply so quickly that soon they become a threat to the ship and crew. There is a lot more to the story than that (reading the plot summary really made me appreciate the quality of this show; I’ll forever be a Trekkie) but the situation reminds me somewhat of Twitter’s recent explosion into mainstream US culture and the resultant negative backlash. Derided by some as the pinnacle of narcissism and banality (see: Twouble with Twitters [n.b. the video autoplays so turn down your speakers before clicking]), the reality is that for many working people, especially educators, Twitter has become a critical component of our professional lives. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that people are paying way too much attention to follower counts. The bottom line, in my opinion, is twofold:
- People “use” Twitter differently, even within homogeneous groups (like, say, educators).
- As people “use” Twitter more and more, invariably, emotions, opinions, personalities, agendas, wishes and desires get increasingly intertwined with the fabric of the conversation. (It is, after all, a human network.)
What does this mean for the typical educator looking to Twitter as a tool to build their personal learning network? Early on, not much, other than the confusion one feels when sorting out the “who do I follow” question, which is usually accompanied soon thereafter by moments of wonder as to “why didn’t so-and-so follow me back?” It’s a complex issue that I think can essentially be summed up by #1 above (and partially #2).
It’s been nearly a year since David Jakes’ (Happy 50th by the way, sir) now infamous”Tragedy of the Commons” blog post, which, to me, ended up being more about #2 above, but was probably really about #1. I never commented there because I didn’t feel I had anything to add, and because I know and accept the two axioms above. Also, I highly respect and deeply admire people on both sides of the ‘arguments’ raging in the comments. No need to pick sides or fan flames.
Recently, Mike Arsenault blogged, “Are you a Social Media Snob if You Do Not Follow Many People on Twitter?” I was listed as one of the people with a high follow to follower ratio (or is that follower to follow?). He is giving me props for a favorable ratio (I always follow educators who follow me and only use Twitter for professional purposes). He is also taking some people I consider friends to task for not following more people back. I decided I needed to respond.
Mike’s certainly entitled to his opinion (you know what they say about those, and here you are reading mine.) But in my view, accusing people of social media snobbery because they don’t follow more people is overly simplistic and misses the point.
Mike, please see #1 above.
Example: David Warlick. I have known David for a couple of years. I’ve seen him speak many times and have always been impressed by his views, vision and insight. We met, probably a couple of years ago, at NECC I think, and since then, have become professional friends. Last summer, David and I worked shoulder to shoulder for two days at a workshop for New Jersey school administrators about the future of education. His avatar lives in a house of mine in Second Life.
David does not follow me on Twitter.
Example: Will Richardson. I have known for even longer than I have known David. We actually presented together on blogs a couple times down here in Southern NJ, I think it was 2004 – 2005, back when he was still teaching Journalism at Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Here he is pictured with me and my daughter Holly at a Kean University conference a couple of years ago. I am a fellow in the New Jersey Powerful Learning Practice cohort. His avatar also lives in a house of mine in Second Life (though he hasn’t been inworld for a while.)
Will, until fairly recently, didn’t follow me on Twitter.
So here’s the point. These two guys have already forgotten more about social media than I’ll ever know. Whether they follow me on Twitter is irrelevant. It’s just how they choose to use the service. Period.
But wait, there’s more. It’s true, I’ve got a pretty large following on Twitter. I believe that is because I work hard putting things in my stream that will be of value to others. I rarely use Twitter for discussion or personal matters. As a result, I now have a weapon of almost unimaginable intellectual power – the minds of literally thousands of other talented educators (and others) around the world. Some are well known, others not so much. Together, they are a network of people whom I can go to for advice and counsel – and get INSTANTANEOUS information. It’s like Google, but supercharged, on steroids and dipped in crack. Yeah. Exactly.
Twitter’s having growing pains, though. It’s getting harder and harder for me to manage my network. Here’s why…
Everyone is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon of late. We are all getting more followers. The question is: do you follow back? The answer is not so simple. Consider these follows I literally just received this morning:
Educator, clearly. Instant follow back. For me, anyway. Next…
Scientist type. Quasi-educational, in a way. Definitely not someone who should be blocked, but should I follow back? I allowed the follow but did not follow back. Onward…
Marketing type. Non-educator. Do I block or just allow the follow? I allowed the follow. Should I have blocked? The next one is easier.
Uhhhh…no complex analysis needed. Instantaneous BLOCK.
So there you have it. Of these four new follows, I followed ONE back, blocked one, and allowed the other two to follow me. I suck at math, but if I understand Mike’s methodology, continuing to act in this manner will slowly but surely push my “follower/following” ratio further away from the (presumed) ideal of 1.0 (or lower).
Who cares?
No offense intended Mike, I’m glad you blogged what you did because it gave me a chance to enunciate something I’ve been literally thinking about for over a year. This post explains how I use Twitter. I follow 100% of the educators who follow me. If other people do as I do, great. If they don’t, great. It really does not matter … to me. Note I am not saying it should not matter to you – that’s your call. But accusing people of being social media snobs just because they don’t follow more of their followers is I think a little simplistic and misses the point. It’s not about you or me as individuals. It’s about how people choose to use their own networks.
Peace,
-kj-
17 responses so far ↓
1 Charlie A. Roy // Apr 4, 2009 at 9:22 am
An intriguing post. I’m receiving more and more followers as of late as the band wagon grows. What amazes me is the number of people who are following and with follower numbers in the thousands. How do they keep up?
2 Kevin Jarrett // Apr 4, 2009 at 9:26 am
Thanks for commenting Charlie. There is no ‘keeping up’ with a follower list of more than, I’d say, maybe 50, 100 tops. There is a reason it’s called a Twitter stream, and that is, it literally keeps on going whether we are there or not. Once I realized that, I got over my Twitter Angst, and just accepted the fact that as my network grows, I will miss some things. That is okay. It is more important to me that I build the largest network of quality people I can, because, paradoxically, the larger the network is, the more time I save! -kj-
3 Paula White // Apr 4, 2009 at 9:49 am
Kevin (and Charlie),
The Twitter Stream is an analogy many may find hard to understand/accept until they get to that point of MANY followers and following. That’s why I relate it to this song http://blip.fm/~3t5vv (one of my favs!) and tell newbies (that I am helping) to think of it as a stream where you “dip your toe” when you can and just let the river flow on by when you can’t. Just as you wouldn’t drink an entire river, neither do you drink in the entire TwitterStream. :-)
Great post, Kevin!
4 Claudia Ceraso // Apr 4, 2009 at 10:49 am
Feeling at home in this post.
Twitter is personal. I am not alone in this line of thought:
http://twitter-casts.wikispaces.com/Why+Twitter%3F
Now your post makes me reflect that not only have we used it for different purposes among educators, we also have changed the way we converse over there through time. Network management issues come to the front now.
I guess we will come across many more Twitter posts like the ones quoted here. What I like about your post is that you have clearly expressed a simple truth: we cannot take the human out of the Twitter stream.
Neither in Twitter, nor in the classroom. But I digress…
5 Gerald Aungst // Apr 4, 2009 at 11:56 am
Kevin, I really appreciate this post. I used to feel a twinge of guilt when I didn’t follow someone. I use slightly different criteria than you (and I’m not even certain that mine are fully defined), but you made the point well that it doesn’t matter if I use the tool precisely the way you or anyone else does.
As for the Twitter stream concept, I had that “aha” moment myself a couple weeks ago. I think too many people think of Twitter like email on meth (to extend your analogy). Remembering that you don’t need to catch up is one of the keys to Twitter becoming a productivity tool instead of a time sink.
6 Alice Yucht // Apr 4, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Excellent explanation! Personally, I use Tweetdeck’s “groups” function to create separate rivulets by area of interest, so I can follow the conversations more easily.
7 MagistraM // Apr 4, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Thank you for articulating your take on Twitter. I follow a similar philosophy in following mostly educators and trying to use Twitter as a professional tool and not a personal outlet. I have stopped following every educator who follows me, however, since I’ve been finding myself lost in too many conversations. Generally I’m glad to have as many followers as possible. I’m just finding that I can’t keep up with too many people myself. As you said, how you use Twitter (as with any tool) is a personal choice. I wish that people wouldn’t see a non-follow as a personal slight.
8 Angela Stockman // Apr 5, 2009 at 7:43 am
We were just having this conversation at a local Tweetup last night–every person in the room used Twitter in different ways for different reasons and reflected on the whole phenomenon that is Twitter differently as well.
I tended to follow everyone who followed me in the early days, but keeping up became difficult, and I found that some people were sharing things that were more relevant to my interests and work, and I quickly scaled back. Now, I tend to follow all educators, and as I find my numbers climbing, I refine my network to those I know I will learn the most from. But I don’t know that this will always be the case.
I have a feeling that the way that I use Twitter will continue to evolve over time, and it’s hard for me to make sense of the “formulas” and “rules” that others suggest we follow–particularly when they are a bit different depending on any user’s particular niche. I follow a couple basic rules of thumb, and they seem to work for me: make yourself useful, try to give as much as you get from others there, and remain collegial in your exchanges with people. Beyond that, it’s all a learning process for me, still.
9 Kevin Jarrett // Apr 5, 2009 at 8:34 am
Thanks for commenting, everyone…
@paula – what song? The link is bad!
@claudia – agree on the network management perspective. As our networks grow, they take more and more time to manage. Fortunately, the return on that time investment is expressed in network power. :)
@gerald – yep – the sooner people realize that Twitter is best used in dribs and drabs, the happier they are! Who has time to let it run their lives?
@alice – I’ve tried different twitter apps including Tweetdeck but I always end up back on the web client. Groups is a GREAT feature and would help a LOT. Now, if Twitter would incorporate that into the web interface, hmmmmmmm!
@MagistraM – totally agree with you on the personal slight thing. That is what started this whole debate – someone got their feelings hurt. Understandable, especially for the person who was slighted face to face. (Though I bet the individual in question didn’t mean to directly insult the other person.)
@Angela – agree about the ‘evolution’ – good point – and also about how people spout rules. I did it myself a while back, chiding newbies who protect their updates to reconsider. I still believe that if you are Twittering to build a PLN that protected updates are counterproductive, but hey, it’s a free country, right?
Thanks again, all, for extending the conversation!
-kj-
10 Paula Naugle // Apr 5, 2009 at 1:20 pm
When I opened my Twitter account I just “listened” in for the first two months. Then I got some Tweet names from a Classroom 2.0 Live session. so I started to follow them. I finally posted a couple of tweets and I got some followers.
Yesterday and today I have invested some time finding educators to follow so I can build my PLN. Many of them started following me back, and some did not. At first I wondered why and realized they had different needs. I found some great resources that were shared via a tweet, so I am quickly learning the value of Twitter to an educator.
How is it handled when you want to stop following someone? Are they notified by email, like when you start following them? Is it like a virtual snub?
As always, thank you for your though provoking post.
11 Kevin Jarrett // Apr 5, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Hi Paula, welcome to the world of Twitter, and thanks for reading my blog. Happy to follow you back! People are not notified that someone ‘unfollows’ them other than they notice their follower count drop. There is a service however called http://useqwitter.com/ that will notify you of when people stop following. To stop following someone, click on their name in Twitter, then click where it says ‘Following’ – you can then ‘Unfollow’ them. Hope this helps!
12 Tara Seale // Apr 7, 2009 at 10:53 am
I have enjoyed reading your response to Are You a Social Media Snob if You Do Not Follow Many People on Twitter? I have asked my students to read and respond on their own blogs about the relevance of Twitter. They are reading your blog post and other related posts as part of the assignment. You can read the assignment at the Read the Net Edublog.
13 Kevin Jarrett // Apr 7, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hi Tara,
That is amazing, high school kids pondering the value of branding via Twitter? Heady stuff. I read through the blogs and understand their perspectives, for teens, it seems other methods of social networking make more sense. For adults that aren’t already doing that level of social networking (like me), Twitter really is critical. Thanks for commenting and good luck with your class!
-kj-
14 Nadine N // Apr 11, 2009 at 10:41 pm
This is a great post and the comments add to the message. I agree with you that you can’t make a sweeping rule about following those who follow you. As you said, it was easy in the beginning. I followed anyone who I felt I could learn from – almost always educators. As twitter has become more popular I make similar decisions about who I follow back now – mostly because now I get far more follows by people who I have little to nothing in common with. I don’t want to be snobbish – it’s a time management issue for me. I want my Twitter stream to sustain a particular tone and focus that can only be maintained by choosing to follow people who are fairly like-minded or have similar passions.
I make the same observation as your #2. However, the presence of egos and personal agendas hasn’t detracted me from benefiting from the network.
I am very clear on my purpose for using Twitter – to connect with other educators, to learn about new tools, strategies, and best practices. I am grateful for each member of my network for helping me learn something new everyday!
15 Kevin Jarrett // Apr 12, 2009 at 8:18 am
Hi Nadine, thanks for commenting. Twitter is getting a little hard to manage now that it’s going “mainstream.” Do you use a Twitter client? I don’t. I really should but don’t have any interest in learning an application for what I perceive mostly as a browsing experience! -kj-
16 Dorothy // May 8, 2009 at 5:55 am
Hi Kevin, great post as always – very though provoking. I have enjoyed following your thinking both in the post and through the comments above. I especially liked your response to the teenagers as I have teens in my own house who think I am ’sad’ twittering. You stated the obvious very well :)
17 David Ligon // Jul 19, 2009 at 3:45 am
Kevin, you have shared some great insights here, echoing my thought processes exactly when deciding how to handle new followers. My only difference is that I tend to also block marketing spammers that have many thousands of follow/(ers). I’m thinking that they really aren’t interested in my thoughts just wanting to use me for their count. So I lighten the load, limiting only respectable colleagues in follow, even though it skews my ratio. And, yes, people do indeed use Twitter differently.
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