Twitter is not a Social Network

Recently, a Christian blogger who I respect mentioned me in a blog post, entitled Ranking blogs by Twitter followers. He had noticed the following tweet of mine:

"People you may know" from @twitter is pointless. I don't use Twitter that way; I don't think many people do. I follow ppl I DON'T know! :p

— Graham Downs (@GrahamDowns) September 29, 2012

He said that he agreed with my usage of Twitter, and that it got him thinking about how people use Twitter. I wanted to simply post a comment on his blog, but since my response would be a bit off the topic of what he was actually trying to say, I thought I'd write a new one in response.

Thanks for the mention, Steve (follow Steve @hayesstw on Twitter)!

You are right. What I was trying to get at is this: on Facebook (for example) I try to limit my friends list to people I actually know in real life. On Twitter, my approach is completely different. I might follow someone on Twitter simply because I'm their friend in real life and I want to give them "the benefit of the doubt." But I'll quickly unfollow them if they continually tweet stuff that I have no interest in. I don't take offence at being unfollowed, and I expect that you won't, either.

I've said it before: to me, Twitter is NOT a social network! Sure, there are conversations taking place on Twitter all the time, but they're more of the academic debate kind than the "Hi, how are you?" kind. I use Twitter first and foremost as an Information Sharing Network. The vast majority of the things I share on Twitter are links to articles. Sometimes I share funny photos, or post updates without any links - but when I do that, it's to advertise events or venues that I've attended, and I try to mention people by their Twitter handles in those. This helps advertise those events and venues and get the organisers more followers. There's always a point.

And yes, if I find your posts interesting, informative, or funny, I'll follow you. If that ceases to be the case, I'll stop. My friendship with you, or whether I know you in real life or not, has nothing to do with it!