5 Twitter personalities to unfollow

I’ve been in a little bit of a grump recently regarding twitter. I can’t really stay committed to contributing and quite frankly I’m getting exhausted with all the spam and bullshit that seems to be more prevalent than ever. I brought this up to one of my co-workers and he suggested that maybe I follow the wrong people which is an obvious possibility so I’m going to try to increase my interest in twitter by refining the list of people I follow. Instead of aimlessly making cuts I thought I would first try to classify the types of people that are responsible for my lack of interest in twitter.

1. The Auto-Voyeurist – The auto-voyeurist is a peculiar creature who excessively values their every move and always feels the pressure filled need to constantly feed their growing crowd of followers with the utmost of important information.  Typical tweets include anything from “cleaning my ears” to “driving” or even “thinking” and are consistently presented with other useless tweets.  Once the auto-voyeurist does find something of real value to present to their “fanclub” expect rapid tweeting with complete disregard for the 140 char rule.  One thought may last anywhere from 2 to 5 tweets to convey the true importance of their information.
2. The Reporter – The reporter, while bringing occasional value to the table, has a quickly depleting offering.  Given the involvement of the major news and blog companies and the pure saturation of people on twitter the News Reporter often becomes the News Re-Re-Re-porter.  Typical tweets almost always include links to articles from Mashable or TechCrunch followed by 3 to 6 tweets regarding their newly presented ‘news’.  The reporter has a natural instinct for polling their entire audience and often requests feedback regarding their newly found Mashable or TechCrunch article.  The reporter occasionally doubles as a auto-voyeurist when reporting on completely useless news.
3. The Social Media Noob – This character is one of the hardest Twitter personalities to truly identify because of the extreme diversity of the personality.  The social media noob is similar to a chameleon taking on characteristics of their present surrounding patiently waiting for the imminent attack, which often comes in the form of a self proclamation of their social media expertism status.  This particular personality is different from the true Social Media Expert but has many mimicking tendencies  further camouflaging their lack of value.  Although the social media noob has the best of social media intentions they often have delayed revelations of concepts, ideas and important people.  The social media noob has never been a developer or a designer but always critically critiques all applications with the utmost of scrutiny.
4. The Promoter – The promoter is an interesting character with unrivaled passion and dedication who unfortunately struggles with a true perception of reality.  The promoter has completely addictive tendencies such as excessive and unjust promotion of  electronic devices, weblebrities or locations, particularly locations of food consumption.  Typical tweets from the promoter include anything from “eating at Tommy’s Tavern on 1st and 4th, best food, period” to “The BlackBerry Storm is the best mobile device on the planet”.  Tweets rarely offer any room for interpretation and are stated as facts to penetrate deep into the mind of the unsuspecting followers.
5. The 12 seconds…..of wasted time – This person is excessively annoying but often very enticing.  Typical tweets  are challenging in nature because their perceived value is always much higher than their true value.  The tease of the 12seconds link is enough to encourage even the most advanced twitter folk to click with curious anticipation.  Following this type of character is similar to playing the lottery, you’re odds of something worthless are very high and only if you’re really lucky will you get a valuable reward.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed

Damien
@DamienH

Centralized registry for usernames

I was part of a twitter conversation the other day with @penguin and @geekgiant were we discussed how frustrating it is to go to a new service and have you “go-to” username already taken.  It seems to me that something like OpenID should have a username registry where you could reserve a username much like you would reserve a domain name.  Then any services that work with OpenID would have to query the username registry before allowing someone to pick a username.

I think such a service is becoming more and more desirable.  With the rapid rise of Social Media many people have essentially developed brand equity or “self-equity” with their usernames.  Think of twitter and all of the ‘twitter-lebrities’.  Imagine if someone was able to register @scobelizer or @laughingsquid on the next up and coming social network, there is some equity to be had which may even translate into a monetary transaction for the rightful person to own their identity.

Damien
@DamienH