I’ll come right out and say it – I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I think it’s one of the simplest yet most effective networking tools anywhere in social media. Such a simple networking concept as well – 140 characters to have a conversation (Tweet) or recommend a blog, website, person, business or product. Yet like any popular application, Twitter has its downside as well.
This ranges from the people who follow you simply to spam you with pitches for their business or latest money-making venture, to the Twitter users for whom having the largest amount of followers is more important than the conversation.
This is a major no-no in my book – after all, social media is all about the conversation, whether it’s from a business or personal point of view. But there could be a solution…
I’m not a technical person by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder how easy it would be for the Twitter programmers to make their status bar interactive? At the moment, it’s just the standard “What are you doing?” that greets all users. But what if it was tied into each Twitter user’s comments and updated accordingly?
You could the have an instant view of what that person is like on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best kind of user who gives as much as takes, and 1 being the George W. Bush of the Twitter world). Some of the messages could include:
- Why would you ever follow me? This would be reserved for the users who Tweet incessantly every minute and all about their own product, blog or business. Conversation for them died with women getting the vote. Why would you follow them indeed?
- Why won’t you love me? Perfect for Twitter users who are simply in it for bragging rights to their friends about how many people are following them. The only Tweet you see from them is the “Who wants to be number 10 / 20 / 30?” and so on.
- Why 8/10 Whiskas cats prefer my Tweets. This would be for those Twitter users that embrace the true meaning of social media. They share, they advise, they interact, they converse – simply put, they socialize.
Of course, you could have an infinite amount of status bar messages. The Tweets that people sent out would have their own analytic measurement – using keywords, links and hash tags – and the status would change accordingly.
Like I said, I’m no technical whiz. But I’m sure either the guys at Twitter itself, or one of the numerous and highly talented application developers using Twitter, could come up with something. What about you – think it’d catch on?