Looks like I spoke too soon about being unaffected by Twitter’s purge.
Last month I wrote that I was virtually unaffected by the Twitter purge that hit United States Presidents Trump and Obama (see related article, Thankful for real Twitter followers). This month, I looked at my follower statistics and noticed a sharp decline on Wednesday, August 15, 2018.
On Tuesday, August 14, 2018, I had 4,416 followers.
But on Wednesday, August 15, I had only 4,344 followers – a loss of 72 followers or 1.63%.
Is Twitter continuing to purge inactive/fake accounts? Or did some of my followers take offense to me writing about SAP Analytics Hub?
Or “How I fared after the July 2018 Twitter purge”.
Twitter made news last week by purging locked accounts.
Two of the biggest losers were Twitter’s most famous user, President Trump, who saw roughly 400,000 of his 53.4 million followers vanish, and Barack Obama, who bid farewell to more than 2 million.
President Trump lost less than 1% of his followers. Former president Barack Obama lost nearly 2%.
Curious to see how my own Twitter account fared after the purge, I turned to my Twitter analytics page. I was surprised to learn that I actually gained a modest number of followers over the past 28 days.
As you can see, I gained 7 followers during the past 4 weeks.
Aside from a very active US president, Twitter doesn’t seem the busy news source that it used to be, especially for analytics news. I’ve noticed that more and more people are interacting with me and my blog from LinkedIn, not Twitter.
You can keep up with my analytics antics on your favorite social network, assuming that it’s either Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
Finally, you can support this site by making purchases through one of its Amazon links, like this one.
What kinds of social media are you still using? Did you survive the most recent Twitter purge? Wherever you are, thank you for following me along my analytics journey!
Dick Costolo gives us all permission to NOT tweet.
In a recent New York Times interview with technology writer Farhad Manjoo, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo made what was considered to be a controversial statement.
I meet people who say, “Oh, I don’t tweet.” I think there’s still a misconception that the reason they’d sign up is to tweet. When I meet them, I tell them, “No, you don’t have to.” [emphasis mine]
As somebody who is an active blogger, I like to stay active professionally on Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook. But I talk to many business intelligence professionals who either don’t have a Twitter account or have one but seldom use it. I usually hear objections to Twitter like “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t have anything to say”. But read how Twitter’s own CEO describes Twitter. From the same interview, Dick Costolo says:
Everyone wants to know and stay up-to-date on what’s happening in their world and be connected and know what’s going on. That’s what Twitter provides. So I think that irrespective of whether you want to tweet, everyone can get value out of Twitter right away.
Twitter is like a 24-hour news channel where you get to pick the news. You don’t have to be a CNN anchor head, a revolutionary in Egypt, or a mommy blogger to appreciate the news ticker scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Think of how many times you’ve read a news ticker while watching TV at the airport, at the gym on a treadmill, or watching sports while munching wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. Twitter is currently the fastest way to get news about SAP analytics. Or any topic, for that matter.
“@JADoss23: @thedavidcrosby opinion on kanye’s music, impact as an artist?” Music ?.. He’s an idiot and a poser….has no Talent at all — David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) March 3, 2015
But back to analytics. Twitter is currently the fastest way to get news about SAP analytics. From news that a new support pack of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 has dropped, a new must-read blog posthas been published, or the date and location of a new conference has been announced, it’s all happening first on Twitter.
BI 4.1 Support Pack 5 Patch 3 now available — Matthew Shaw (@MattShaw_On_BI) February 27, 2015
Here are five additional suggestions, if you follow my first suggestion to sign up for Twitter.
Find a Twitter Client that Suits your Style
There are many apps for Twitter besides the official Twitter app. And most mobile apps and even desktop operating systems like Apple’s Mac OS X allow you to receive notifications from social media channels. So you can stay in-the-know wherever you are. Be sure to find a Twitter client (I prefer Hootsuite) that makes it easy to follow #hashtags, because you should…
Follow #Conversations, not People
It’s OK to follow people via their Twitter account. I currently follow 905 accounts. But the chatter can get a bit noisy. It’s more efficient to follow conversations via their #hashtags. Every day, I’m watching conversations about the SAP BI platform #BI4/#BI41, celebrity BI tools (#SAPLumira, #SAPDesignStudio, #SAPHANA), and conferences (#SABOUC, #BI2015, #HANA2015, #SAPPHIRENOW).
Keep an eye on your vendors
You should definitely follow the Twitter accounts of software companies whose products you use everyday. Keep in mind that a large company like SAP will have multiple Twitter accounts, some of which will be more valuable than their main feed. For example, following @SAPAnalytics is probably more useful to a BI professional than following SAP. Follow the major database vendors that you use, like Oracle or Teradata. It’s a great way to learn that critical patches have been released. And it never hurts to keep an eye on the BI landscape by following Tableau, Qlik, or analysts like Gartner and Forrester.
Identify Yourself
You may not tweet often or ever, but take a few moments to write a short biography about yourself. And replace that silly egg picture with a selfie, ideally the same photo you use on other professional social media outlets like LinkedIn. I’m grateful that there’s not too many Dallas Marks’ in the world (but there is more than one- see here). But if lots of other Twitter users have a similar name to yours, the photo and biography will help others know that they’ve found the right “you”. Be sure to include your Twitter handle on your LinkedIn profile.
Consider Retweeting
Even if you never compose an original tweet, you should periodically re-tweet messages that you personally find useful. It’s not only helpful feedback to the original tweeter, but you may find yourself attracting your own following by other like-minded people on Twitter who don’t like to tweet. And that’s not a bad thing.
By tapping into the world’s collective brain, researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the mundane comments, the live conversations offer an early glimpse into public sentiment — and even help them shape it.
There are some interesting anecdotes about how companies like Amazon, Dell and Starbucks use information extracted from Twitter to respond to and shape their respective markets.
Perhaps SAP BusinessObjects will package a solution using their text analytics software optimized for Twitter. What would they call it? RapidTweet?
