Think About Your Scope of Influence on Twitter or LinkedIn

I was intrigued by an article I found on HackerNews this morning. The article, entitled Primates on Facebook, was published in The Economist online and it accentuates something I’ve been discussing in the office for a couple of weeks: focusing on the quantity of ‘followers’ (on Twitter) or ‘friends’ (on Facebook) is misguided and inherently denegrates the relevance of the distribution of your content. Let me explain.

Scope of Influence On Twitter

I’ve read hundreds articles that recommend you ‘follow’ Guy Kawaski on Twitter. I did it and I dumped him two days later. Here’s why: Guy Kawasaki adds little, or no, value to the Twitter community. Guy Kawasaki’s scope of influence is mitigated by the fact that the same number of people follow him as he follows. This means that he can’t possibly ‘hear’ everyone who’s tweeting him and as a result the people he follows have no real voice: no influence.

Social Media Scope of Influence

The image above illustrates my point as a comparison between Adam Savage (of Mythbusters) and Guy Kawaski and their scope of influence on Twitter. Group A (people that Adam follows) consists of only 9 (nine) people. Those nine people have a tremendous amount of influence over their relationship with Adam Savage. Group B (people that Guy Kawasaki follows) numbers in the 20,000 range. Group B has little, I’d argue no, influence over Guy Kawasaki. As a result, Guy’s forced to broadcast a high-volume of low-quality content, making him irrelevant (to me anyway.)

Jim Connolly, an active marketing blogger, left Twitter when he came to the same conclusion. With more than 10,000 followers he had become a conduit for people seeking access to his gigantic audience, instead of a ‘friend’ participating in a meaningful two-way conversation.

According to The Economist:

“Put differently, people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a polling organisation. Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.”

Takeaway Message

If there’s something to learn from my post and The Economist article, it’s that their’s a much higher value placed on more intimate, therefore influential, social networking relationships. I’ve only recently come to this conclusion and I’ve started to choose my ‘friends,’ ‘connections,’ and ‘followers’ far more carefully than before. If you’re looking to share your content in social networks make sure you keep it small and participate in the generation of valuable content, instead of broadcasting to your network. You’ll be more widely respected.

My Question To You

I’d like to know if you find Guy Kawaski’s tweet’s of any value? And, how many followers on Twitter is too many to digest?

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."