Losing Twitter Followers is a Good Thing
written by Steven on August 01, 2008
I started the day yesterday with 350 followers on Twitter. During the afternoon, after a brainstorming video chat session, Allan and I posted the following tweets:
Allan: Just had an idea orgy with @stevenbristol
Steve: The most giving and considerate partner a guy could ask for: @lessallan
Shortly there after I was joking that I probably lost a few followers, so I checked and I was down to 342 followers, losing eight folks. I don't check my follower count regularly, but I happened to look that morning because Twitter has been having problems and the count was changing wildly. So maybe the drop was due to Twitter, but I hope not, and here's why: Because I am not fucking bland. When writing your blog, you should be yourself. That means not going out of your way to not be offensive, and not going out of your way to be offensive. Be who you are. I swear a lot (my mother hates it) so I occasionally tweet swear words. That's OK with me. Allan and I enjoy junior high school type humor, so we tweet stupid jokes a lot. We try to be honest and genuine.
When you meet us in person, you will know exactly what to expect. Allan and I had a talk a long time ago about softening our personalities for the blog and Twitter and every public facing thing we do. We decided that people will want to work with us and know us because of who we are, not because of who we represent ourselves to be. It turned out to be true.
We've found that most people that know us have a definite opinion of us, they either really like us or hate us. Just like most of our users either love or hate our products. This is a good thing. Having passionate users IS the goal. People that love your stuff is the way to grow a business, any business. Having bland and watered-down products is like eating pea soup at every meal of every day for the rest of your life. You can live on it, but nobody wants to. Also, it is my understanding that eating the same thing for every meal will eventually make you sick, just like using bland software.
Be yourself, have the confidence to stand out in a crowd and say what's on your mind.
And for those of you that are genuinely bland, that's OK, too. Be yourself. Love yourself. The world will love you too. Just don't write bland software, no one needs that.
Allan's two cents, "people love vanilla ice cream, but not many people are passionate about it."
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Steven Bristol has written code for the past 20 years. He like green vegetables and kittens, oh and butterflies too. He loves to throw ninja stars at his enemies.
7 Comments
haha…glad I came across you guys!
I think as a whole, people constantly worry about how they’ll be perceived, especially when it carries over to the internet. If an individual is trying to find out something about you, they’ll likely look online first, so people tend to censor their thoughts. I’m definitely guilty of this. But you make a valid point – why go out of your way to appease everyone. The fact that you are your own person is what you’re selling. You don’t want to be like everyone else, there’s nothing to differentiate you.
My favorite part – “Allan and I enjoy junior high school type humor”. Noted – http://twitter.com/stevenbristol/statuses/874273756.
Thanks for the eye opener fellas :-)
I find this funny because the reason you suppose you lost followers is the reason I started reading the blog and following both of you in the first place. In fact the original way I found out about you was because of the head-butting video that Obie posted. If that’s not “junior high school type humor” I don’t know what is. But you know what? I think people are starting to be able to tell when someone is being genuine online and I think people are beginning to respond to that after all the fake viral videos and fake online (and offline) personalities. That’s why I read you guys and Giles Bowkett and Zed and Obie, etc.: passion, humor, sincerity and yes, every once in a while, intelligent discourse too.
Blandness fails to create an emotional attachment, and those attachments ultimately drive people to everything they do. Also, if people shy away from a little gay humor, they’re pussies and don’t matter.
Dude, Vanilla ice cream is actually my most favorite ice cream. I hate chocolate ice cream, that shit sucks.
Oh man…
http://twitter.com/stevenbristol/statuses/874273756
If it’s morning, why is the moon still out!? ahahah I kill myself.
@Brennan: I couldn’t agree more.
@Auston: Dude, those are some funny comments!
Amen, brother. You reminded me of http://xkcd.com/137/. (How do I format links on your blog?) Don’t ever lose that edge!