I read Anil Dash’s post titled “Nobody Famous” on Medium recently and it is worth reading if you are either wondering if it is worth the effort attracting a large Twitter following or if you believe your large Twitter following is somehow meaningful.

Nobody Famous

I noticed that a tweet I posted was getting a lot more attention than my usual stuff so I took a look at the activity on that tweet. What I saw immediately reminded me of Dash’s post. Relative to my usual tweets, this particular tweet received a lot of attention and my one thought was that I should have written a post on this blog about WooThemes’ terrific news to benefit from the attention the tweet received but then I noticed the actual click-throughs.

Tweet activity for a tweet about the @WooThemes acquisition
Tweet activity for a tweet about the @WooThemes acquisition

Twitter used to be this really important web traffic driver. It still is significant, relatively speaking, but it is hardly the killer engagement tool it is sometimes made out to be.


Discover more from Paul Jacobson

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

4 responses

  1. Nathan Jeffery avatar

    It really is surprising to see the number of engagements compared to the number of impressions.

    1. Paul avatar

      It is a reminder that Twitter engagement serves Twitter more than anyone else.

  2. Nathan Jeffery avatar

    Totally! I need to hurry up and launch one of my side projects. 😀

  3. […] I don’t agree with using Twitter as a personal social network. It has always seemed like the digital equivalent of trying to have a private conversation in a crowded room. You just wind up shouting at each other while anyone and everyone listens in. I suppose DMs make this possible but none of my friends use DMs for personal chat. Twitter just doesn’t have that “personal chat thing” like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have. It also isn’t a particularly effective engagement tool either. […]

What do you think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Your post must include a link to this post.

How does this work?
Write a response on your own website and include a link to this post. Then submit your response’s URL here. Your response may appear here after moderation. To update or remove it, edit or delete your original post and submit the same URL again. Learn more about Webmentions.