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<\/a><\/p>\nIt looks like these services are doing so well that they are able to afford Google ads to sell their product. But as far as organic Google page-rank, they don\u2019t have any because blogs aren\u2019t linking to them.<\/p>\n
What a great tactic though. A new user is trying to get more followers and searches Google and is greeted with dozens of ads on getting more followers. Many of the services are free and a quick submission of your Twitter credentials and you\u2019re in!<\/p>\n
This ruins Twitter as my friend realized. Twitter is as much about listening and absorbing than it is about telling the world what you\u2019re doing. The economy and beauty of Twitter is that it\u2019s a two-way country highway with friends passing in the opposite direction. You both share some ideas, links, thoughts and mind-share and then move on as opposed to most social networks that resemble an 8-lane highway with exits, detours, road construction and accidents. I love Twitter\u2019s simplicity but it\u2019s only valuable if you\u2019re receiving updates from people you are interested in.<\/p>\n
Twitter is all about being organic and these services take the fun out of Twitter. It\u2019s like having 1,200 channels on your television but the TV is always scanning and never sitting on one channel for more than 5 seconds. Sounds pretty painful, right? That\u2019s exactly what it\u2019s like when you realize that you\u2019re following 16 thousand people that you don\u2019t care about and the stream of \u201cfriends\u201d is useless.<\/p>\n
There is an alternative where you can use this service and still follow only your friends. There are web and desktop based applications that allow you to configure groups for Twitter. TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop come to mind. I have been against groups since the beginning and neither Twitter.com or its API support groups but people seem to really love them. I\u2019ve asked why and it appears the answer is they follow too many people and just want to read the posts from people they really care about, like family, co-workers or celebrities, in one timeline. My opinion: you\u2019re following too many people.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say you want to be able to read your Twitter stream and still have thousands of followers using one of these services. The answer is setting up one of these applications with groups for people you actually care about and just looking at the group all day. Now you can have your cake and eat it too but there is still a fundamental flaw that many users haven\u2019t realized.<\/p>\n
How do you know those 16 thousand people that follow you actually care what you have to say or if they\u2019re putting YOU in a group of people that they don\u2019t want to read? The final problem might be that they joined Twitter, signed up to a service to get more followers and after their Twitter stream turned into an 8-lane highway, they just quit and moved on. Your 16 thousand followers looks a hell of a lot less now that we realize half of them aren\u2019t reading your tweets, 30% of them have stopped using Twitter and the 20% that are looking at your stream are probably also following 16 thousand people and the likelihood of reading your tweet is so low that you might as well be screaming the password to your gmail account to a herd of elephants. Elephants might be known for \u201cnever forgetting\u201d but how many times have you seen an elephant use a computer? Exactly.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, your brilliant idea of getting thousands of followers looks a lot different, doesn\u2019t it? You have a Twitter stream of people you\u2019re following that is barely usable due to the amount of tweets and lack of interesting posts. You are tweeting links to thousands of people that aren\u2019t around, are following too many people who just don\u2019t care about your thoughts and now you have an account that will probably be suspended by Twitter for following too many people too quickly. Oh, and let\u2019s not forget that you probably paid for this service at around $40 a month. Congrats, you\u2019re a Twitter expert and it\u2019s useless.<\/p>\n
What have we learned? The organic tips for gaining followers like this one<\/a> are the tried and true methods for truly making your mark on Twitter. If anyone is asking you to pay money to get ahead on the Internet, just remember it\u2019s all ones and zeros and true social networking happens face to face. If you can get your followers to meet you offline and build lasting friendships, you\u2019re on your way to mastering social media because when Twitter, Facebook and MySpace fade away, there will be other services that pop up and the cycle starts all over but the friendships you made offline will last forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twitter is only 3 years old but in Internet years, it\u2019s been around the block a few times.…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-rants","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-4y","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":135,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/03\/20\/a-perceived-value-of-followfriday\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 A Perceived Value of #FollowFriday","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been very honored to have a great group of followers on Twitter and all of you make my day go by a lot faster. Your unique content, hilarious replies and interesting links keep things fun. The latest trend in Twitter is #FollowFriday. The idea is simple. Pick a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"#FollowFriday","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3469\/3370255229_d1583bb5e8.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":205,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/04\/08\/adage-tells-us-about-twitter-my-response\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 AdAge Tells Us About Twitter & My Response","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, I clicked through someone's tweet to a post on AdAge.com about Twitter. What intrigued me to click was the title. The post was called, \"Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet\" and it was written by BL Ochman. To make things a bit easier, I've posted the ten\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":648,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/11\/18\/twitters-new-retweet-feature-the-5-minute-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Twitter’s new ReTweet Feature: The 5 Minute Review","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"November 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Just a few minutes ago, I logged into Twitter.com to verify something and saw this glorious goodness: That's actually not my screengrab, I stole it from this guy but I do now regret not screen-grabbing the feature for later use. I've long expressed my \"distaste\" of the new feature but,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Social Media"","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/grab.by\/ENE","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":237,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/04\/15\/i-stand-behind-magpie-twitter-advertisements\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 I Stand Behind Magpie Twitter Advertisements","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In late October, someone told me about Magpie and I think it was a post on TechCrunch. At the time, Magpie would analyze the amount of followers you had and you'd allow them to tweet an ad every 5, 10, 20 or 50 tweets. I think I started out making\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":96,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/03\/09\/advertising-over-twitter-the-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Advertising Over Twitter: The Results","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A month ago, I announced that a partnership between me and Snobby Slice Web Design was going to happen for 2 weeks. Here are the terms of the advertising agreement: Four Tweets every day. 9AM, 12Noon, 3PM, 6PM. Four different advertisements a day all mentioning SnobbySlice.com and @snobbyslice. Contract Was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"snobbystat","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/snobbystat.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1995,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/03\/22\/hey-twitter-where-is-your-data-portability\/","url_meta":{"origin":282,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 Hey Twitter, where is your data portability?","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"MG Siegler of TechCrunch writes: Another untapped treasure trove is tweet archives. Face it, a part of Twitter is about vanity. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s kind of insane that you can\u2019t see what you\u2019ve tweeted or what others have tweeted at you beyond a few days in the past. Just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"picture-2\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/picture-2.png?resize=198%2C264\" "\\"picture-2\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"picture-3\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/picture-3.png?resize=192%2C80\" "\\"picture-3\\"")
<\/p>\n