Stop Twittering About Yourself

…which I will now illustrate by, err, mentioning myself. Nothing like getting the exception to the rule out the way first.

The Times has picked up on a Boston based survey that shows Twitter is just like every other social space, be it in the real world or online. The popular tweeters are those who build up the inclusiveness of Twitter and get involved with people, rather than the self-promoting “look at me” users.

As part of this, Murad Ahmed was looking for a case study on successful tweeting, and asked if i wouldn’t mind being profiled:

“You should think about Twitter as a dinner party. If you meet someone and they’re just saying, ‘I’ve got this, I’ve done that, Aren’t I wonderful?’ – people won’t want to talk to that person. Unless maybe that person is Stephen Fry.

“Twitter is a terribly social place. All conversations work two ways. I think everybody needs a bit of ‘I’m doing this’ about their talk, but you also have to have that listening component as well.

“I’d be interested to see if the study saw how many times people replied to others, and see if there is a correlation between how much interaction there is between people, as well as finding out what are they talking about.

“For example, I’ve covered a number of high profile events. I was at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009. I averaged one tweet every 45 seconds, almost as fast as the subtitles from the show. Obviously, that’s a lot of push, push, push. But there was a lot of replying to people as well.

The full article, including my profile, can be found at The Times.