The other day I got an email from Twitter letting me know a friend of mine had sent me a message. I haven’t been on Twitter in months, and this time as I went in and looked around I realized it was a very cluttered house. I had been following around 350 people, and most of those because of “Twitter Karma” (aka, they follow you, so you follow them). I decided I’m getting too old and cranky to follow people just because they spammed me first. My feed is full of rubbish posts I couldn’t care less about.
So I started weeding. I’m down to 41 I’m following, and that number will be dropping, too, as I remember why I followed a few more of these people. I really couldn’t care less about Twitter karma anymore. What good has it done me beyond getting my feed clogged up with hundreds of self-proclaimed social media gurus, online entrepreneurs, and SEO experts? They have nothing to say that I want to hear.
I’m not really on Twitter anymore, anyway. All I really do there is link to my blog posts, and that’s automated. Most of the people I like to keep in touch with are on Facebook. Most of the people I know who are only on Twitter haven’t posted there in months. Is Twitter dying? I wonder how much of their traffic is automated, duplicating people’s feeds from other platforms.
I remember when everyone was excited about Twitter–and I just didn’t get it. As with many things in life, it seems like once I finally got it, it started going downhill. How’s that for “Twitter karma”! I’m the guy who started Twitter’s demise! It can’t be cool if Thom Stratton is on it.
Probably not true. Facebook is still going strong.
Weigh in if you like: Are you still using Twitter? Do you read as much as you tweet? How much of your tweeting is automated/echoed?