Influencers & Broadcasters (tweet me)

Feel free to tweet whatever you want. Even with thousands of followers, nobody is listening to tweets. The bots are. The spammers are. The scam artists are. So, go ahead, tweet to your hearts content. Just, don’t, expect, any, response.

I remember, back at the dawn of the digital age, when Twitter debuted right here in Austin, Texas at the now-famous SXSW interactive. My crew was all about to be laid off from our cool startup, once the darling, now the dumpling of Dell. We still had our downtown office, but we no longer had obligations beyond helping each other find our next gig. And SXSW was a great place to network. And Twitter appeared like a need idea. Known as the statusphere, a new concept, where you simply broadcast your status and location to others in hopes that they might respond to your Tweet-signal and come for the happy hour at Hooters. (Not really, why would we go there?) We tweeted. We listened to tweets. We learned that status updates needed some regulation to be helpful. We knew nothing about social media the metaverse or tweeting. We were learning to tweet.

As an obsessive tweeter, I learned what makes up the perfect tweet. I even won a contest for creating the best Golden Tweet. (def: when you tweeted exactly 140 characters) Today, Mr. Mars says he’s going to make tweets unlimited in length. My guess is, he doesn’t understand how real people use Twitter. I mean, he bought it, but…

Where I was going with this, was this: tweet whatever the fuck you want. Nobody is paying attention. Anywhere. No one is listening to social media. No one is reading your posts, laughing at your memes (okay, maybe a few people are laughing at your memes), or visiting your website for that amazing piece of content you wrote. It’s not just social media.

We’re all just influencers and broadcasters, these days.

Have you heard a word I’ve said? Written? Are you receiving me?

Tweet your damn heart out. I do.

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.