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Posted by garrigillgal (U14258845) on Saturday, 17th July 2010
Noticed on Twitter this morning that GW is trying to get 1500 followers today - wonder why that is....this may be moved I think - thoughts please.
Don't understand this - although I confess I've no idea what the purpose of Twitter is. Who is 'GW' in this case, and what do you mean by followers? What could be the purpose of this? Please explain for those of us who are not quite 'switched on' yet.
Sorry Ken,
Twitter is one of those Social Networking sites where you are limited to posting 140 characters per message - I use it a lot to advertise my business. You pick up 'followers' - users who like you and want to view and respond to your 'tweets' and likewise you can 'follow' people yourself. Y0ou only view tweets from people on your list so you are not bombarded with stuff of no interest to you.
I follow mostly to gardeners, naturalists, green issue and the like. If someone is 'following' someone who posts up a request (as GW - Gardeners World) did this morning they can ask their followers to retweet it to all their followers so word gets around - that's where I picked it up.
The purpose of getting 1500 followers today would probably be to raise the profile of GW as they will be able to see who retweeted their request and harvest the e-mail information.
I thought they were trying to rekindle interest in GW using another medium. Hope I've made it a bit clearer.
Hope I've made it a bit clearerÂ
You certainly have - and I'm much obliged to you. I'm still not sure what the status of anyone posting such a 'tweet' on behalf of GW would be, but if you can glean any further information on the subject, I'd be very interested to see how it develops. Many thanks. Ken.
Hi Ken,
Well.....the target audience who use Twitter are younger than us oldies - and, like I said before GW can collect the e-mail addresses of everyone who retweets them - River Cottage did so this morning and that's why I found out - River Cottage and GW have been playing a cricket match today (RC won by 45 runs) - hehe!!!
Once GW have interested this 'new' group then they can use them as a focus group and see what they want (provided there IS any interest that is)..
Wonder how many followers they DID get - methinks they should be taking more interest in us long term viewers first
I had a flutter with twittering last year. Couldn't get on with it all as there was little conversation, I just seemed to get loads of promotional or nonsensical tweets, just as the GW site has.
I think the medium is a smart idea, and amongst small groups of friends perhaps they have fun communicating all day long. But as a means of mass communication and engagement it's no more than a room full of people all with a megaphone. No-one's listening, everyone is talking. It's just a cacophony.
Morning Trillium,
Ah, I agree with you - but, as with a roomful of people you gravitate towards like minded folks (once you have found them) and ignore the rest. As I mentioned earlier I suspect GW was using it as a marketing tool amongst those who use Twitter a lot - I checked their site this morning and there were only 86 retweets (people who read their original plea for followers and passed that message on - so far short of the 1,500 they wanted) - not me I hasten to add....have a great gardening day.
If someone retweets you, you can't find out their email address or anything particularly exciting. All that happens is more people will see your post and more people might follow you.
Gardeners' World were trying to get to 1,500 followers. Today they have 1,623 so they have succeeded.
Can anyone recommend anyone interesting to follow btw?
Hi Kathy,
I can find out who retweets my info by going to the appropriate section and accessing the posters Bio -
Can anyone recommend anyone interesting to follow btw?Â
Rachel de Thame?
I don't understand Twitter either. I've just looked at it again to see if it might become any clearer to me, but a rolling scroll of random comments about random topics just came up!
I joined up to see if that made things any clearer and nope, it doesn't (but I do have a girl in Mexico now following me. Boy is she going to be disappointed!)
Perhaps I will have to persist and see if things become any clearer.
David K
Can anyone recommend anyone interesting to follow btw?
Rachel de Thame? loveblushÂ
I think that's called stalking...............
Kathy
Gardeners' World were trying to get to 1,500 followers. Today they have 1,623 so they have succeeded.Â
I think that number is like the BT product 'Friends and Family'.
It keeps the twitter in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in a job and a damned fine job they are doing. (NOT)
Its a bit like people with Blackberry's who have no idea how to use one but they look good when they put it on the table at a meeting.
Another anaesthetic for the masses a bit like faceachebook.
GW will be able to find out who retweets them, but they won't be able to find out their email addresses (unless they've put it on their profile). Everyone who retweets their posts will be following them anyway so they'd already be able to see their profiles, so can't really do any top secret spying by getting retweets.
I'd imagine twitter could be a very useful thing for TV programmes to use; by mentioning what's on this week's show they might get more ocasional viewers watching if it is something that interests them, etc. Obviously if the week's show is rubbish it works less well...
One thing I find Twitter useful for is asking questions to organisations/companies, etc. They'll usually reply very quickly so it's often much better than emailing.
and stalking, obviously!
"Hm" all beyond me! a conversation with a limited number of characters appears to be sound bites to me, not enough to be interesting or stimulate an interest.
I have looked at it and found disjointed replies to a question long gone, you scroll to find what it is all about and? nothing.
What amazes me is go back to the GW message boards two years ago and you found a busy community of people who did discuss things in more depth, then the hosts or some of them cracked down on slightly off subject remarks. Now we are left with a mere shadow of the message board.
Some of the cookery message boards are lively and the best of all if you have a strong stomach is Strictly Come Dancing with its many threads and no overbearing rules.
Time to reassess what GW would like to see on its message boards and then they may not need twittering.
Frank.
I imagine all the Messageboards will be gone soon with the ´óÏó´«Ã½ having to make so many cuts.
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