Last month, I did a piece on the Twitter 100.
There have been more articles on 'How to use Twitter' than I can count.
The reality is all kinds of users post to Twitter for all kinds of reasons.
Some people are just 'mouthy'. They may have some neat stuff to say, but if you follow them, you may not be able to see much else. I follow these guys (and gals) on Friendfeed, where you can still comment back, but without the intense 'noise' cluttering your Twitter stream.
A few use Twitter almost exclusively for self-promotion. That's OK, because if you don't like it, you can always stop following them (or block them). The one's that don't overdo it, I usually keep turned on. There can be some neat stuff there and you can always grab a quick comment back.
Others use Twitter just like they used to use IM. Pretty much the same, except the WORLD is watching, unless you privatize your account to 'friends only'.
These features and the outright simplicity of Twitter is part of why is continues to grow in popularity and cross-over into other spaces other than Tech News and SEM.
Twitterholic is just one of the many apps that have been introduced in the last six months or so, that let you 'peek' and various statistics about people and companies using Twitter, whether you follow them or not.
The Twitter buzz continues into yet another year.
These numbers are, in fact, a little 'off', because there are now a number of ways you can follow people on Twitter, including the increasing popular Friendfeed.com. (Those 'follows' don't count).
This week:
Barack Obama
Today's peek at the Twitter 100 still shows the Democratic Presidential candidate squarely in No. 1 with 20,582 followers.
We mentioned in our previous post that Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis was giving away a MacBook air in his challenge to climb in the Twitter 100. It seems to be working as Calacanis is now in No. 2 with 16,919. A dramatic one month climb! Journalist Leo Laporte is now in No 3. Where's Robert Scoble? No.4 with 16,692.
In all fairness, there is a VERY small margin of followers among post positions 2 and 4. In fact, the list changes so quickly that Scoble climbed back to 16,712 as I was writing this!
Some other notable changes. Veronica Belmont who yesterday announced she will be leaving Mahalo is in No. 10 (with a slow steady climb) eclipsing Michael Arrington of TechCrunch who dropped to No. 11.
Emily Chang of E-Hub (who recently got engaged on Twitter?!) climbs to 64 as headlines blared for days about the Twitter proposal.
So, with Barack Obama far away in No. 1, where is Hillary Clinton? No. 88. Hmmm.
From a promotional standpoint, I'm honestly not sure if any of this matters unless you've hit the top 10 or so. How Scoble, Calacanis, and some of the others manage to read their Twitter stream is beyond me.
New cottage industry. Personal assistants to answers tweets!
Count on the fact that Obama has one (or two ... or three :)