As you probably know, Twitter use has exploded over the last few months. I'll admit that the technical problems that Twitter faced in early 2008 made me doubt that they could scale their system, but I'm forced to admit that I was wrong. Twitter has obviously not only made great improvements in their uptime, but have also managed to scale the service as new users flock to it.
However, this explosion of Twitter popularity means that it's more important than ever that you maintain a presence on Twitter.
In a recent post in the Inquisitr, JR Raphael linked to a New York Times article that talked about "ghost Twitterers," or people that will populate a Twitter account for someone else. For example:
An unabashed user of ghost Twitterers is Guy Kawasaki, a new-media consultant with more than 80,000 followers, who is full of praise for the two employees who enliven his Twitter feed, often posting updates while he is on stage addressing a conference.
“Basically, for 99.9 percent of people on Twitter, it is about updating friends and colleagues about how the cat rolled over,” he said. “For a tenth of a percent it is a marketing tool.”
Annie Colbert, a 26-year-old freelance writer from Chicago who is one of Mr. Kawasaki’s ghost Twitterers, said she judged her performance based on how often her postings for Mr. Kawasaki are “retweeted,” that is, resent by other users of Twitter.
Recently, she said, she had a coup when the actor Ashton Kutcher repeated her post about a YouTube video showing someone getting high from a “natural hallucinogen.”
Well, if Kawasaki can do it, why not others in the social media sphere?
JR Raphael's Inquisitr post caught the attention of another of the Inquisitr's co-writers, Steven Hodson. Now Hodson has a clearly distinctive personality, and he recognizes that he is, in a way, a personal brand. And brands need to be maintained.
However, Hodson is also an advocate of transparency, so even if he wants to maintain his personal brand via Twitter, he would insist on disclosure. Therefore, he has authorized me to disclose that I will be part of Hodson's tweeting team. I have three qualifications for this position:
- I am old.
- I can be cranky.
- I live in Ontario.
For more details about this move, and the others involved, go here.
P.S. I have also received another request for a stand-in of sorts. If you are the parent of two infant twins - one boy, one girl - and if your kids are cute and adorable, there may be some photo opportunities available for your kids as stand-ins for another set of twins with a heavy workload. If you're interested, I can forward your availability to the person in question. You can contact me at the Gmail account empoprises. Please put "LG" in the title of your post so that I handle it correctly.
