Some really interesting newer rules on Twitter seem to be focused on “unleveling the playing field” and creating an environment for cults to thrive. It appears as if the cult breeding ground is being cultivated and the red carpet rolled out for celebrities. Twitter absolutely loves the attention being brought by Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Shaq and Britney Spears. The overall Twitter growth numbers are phenomenal the last month! Who hasn’t heard about Oprah tweeting and the CNN & Ashton race to a million. But beneath the warm fuzzy welcoming are a few struggles going on with and amongst the other “non-glitterati”.
There has been a back and forth debate now for months about what Twitter is for. The fight being predominantly between the people who want to foster closer communication and engage in real conversations and those that are in the court of I do what I want with Twitter. Until now they have been in what I would call opposition camps. But recent developments may have moved some of the fiercest opponents closer together and here is why.
In the midst of all the glamour about Oprah and the race to 1 million followers Twitter was experiencing major technical and slow response issues. Most of the faithful have gotten used to it and even tolerate it in a fun way with the Twitter “fail whale”. Did Twitter come out and say this is being caused by all the new people coming on and blindly “following” celebrities to get their “real time” updates – NO - they took action that affects some of their most loyal and most active and strongest advocates. And that same action will encourage more celebrity type behavior.
What is not real apparent and out in the open yet is the limit Twitter imposed on “all accounts” in the last 5-6 days. How funny is that even. Last weekend they rolled out on a sporadic basis a 1000 following limit per day. They rolled it out over the weekend without telling anyone causing a rumble among the Twitter “force” aka the “twitterverse”. They fell victim to the power of Twitter itself – within 6-12 hours people were twittering about being unable to follow anymore, then leaked reports of a new limit and finally Twitter almost 48 hours later releases an update on the site that yes there is now a 1000 daily limit imposed on all accounts to stop the spread of “aggressive following” within Twitter.
Here is what Twitter has done with this limitation! They basically have sided against many of their strongest supporters and advocates that are not known Hollywood, sports or political celebrities. There is a group of people such as Guy Kawasaki, Aloha Arleen, Perry Belcher that have followers that are in the 50,000 to 100,000 range and they pride themselves on following people back so they can be messaged by their followers and engage in conversation. Check out the celebrities – they follow their buddies and other celebrities. Does Ashton have 1,000,000 he is following back – NO – As of this writing he follows 97 people and almost 1,400,000 follow him. Oprah follows 10 people and has 556,000 followers in 7 days.
Twitter says that those everyday people adding 1000′s of followers can’t keep up with all their followers and yet did they limit the celebrities who never have any intention of engaging in conversation as to how many blind followers they can add? NO!
What has happened is that the mid-level business people, busineses and long term users of Twitter can no longer follow back more than 1000 people in a day, many of them had automatic software doing this as well as adding others to grow their follower base. Guy Kawasaki has been very vocal as a Twitter evangelist – yet also very controversial saying Use Twitter as a business weapon to speak with your customers and prospects! As an example though he always followed people back and he or his staff would engage in conversation when someone had an interesting Tweet. Since this limit was imposed these strong evangelists who were growing their follower base by the 1000′s daily have all dropped into the 300-500 per day range. They still grow by adding people they follow and are limited now in how many they “follow back”
This is the second limit imposed in recent months that seems to target this strong and vocal base of users. The last one was rolled out also unceremoniously, quietly announced (and IMHO) unprofessionally. It limited users to not being able to follow more that 110% of the amount of people who were following them. This was done before even Twitter saw the explosion in non-celebrity user accounts with users in the 20,000 to 200,000 range. People figured out how to maintain strong follower growth even with this % cap and then when 1000′s of users began reaching this range Twitter realized the compounding effect of 10% (Rule of 72 takes only 7.2 days to double your follower group)
Unless Twitter lifts or re-thinks this recent limit or adjusts it – what they are doing is changing the current open nature which is focused on conversations, into more of a “Follow me, Listen to me but don’t talk to me” environment. Sounds like a breeding ground for celebrity cults. Users like Guy Kawasaki will be faced once again with a “Do I follow everyone” decision or do I become a celebrity type and only talk to my followers rather than talk with them.
