The @girlkawasaki effect! How to get Hundreds of Twitter followers with little work on your part

What is the @girlkawasaki effect? How does this work, and how can it work for you?

Let me first off by telling you that @girlkawasaki is a very real person who has a very real blog.  They’re a very good friend of mine and are fortunate to have been an influence of the first draft of this (Originally it could have been the @cxi effect, but that’d be lame and the fruits of my labors resulted in the direct effect to apply to @girlkawasaki :))

So, WTF is this?!? – Alright, I’ll tell you!

While studying the way Twitter works, and more importantly how other people on Twitter work, I began to analyze some trends and patterns of likely events.  I personally love conversation on all topics, so I would follow people of all backgrounds on twitter.  When someone re-tweets someone else on something interesting, I follow them as well, continuously spreading the love of knowledge whether me sharing or simply learning from others experiences.

I noticed that when you add some people, you may get an immediate follow-back, and more often than not an Auto-DM (Direct Message).  A lot of people find these Auto-DM’s to be a bit annoying.  I simply find them to be rather insincere and only a little annoying. ;) I do like them because Auto-DM’s typically give rise to the fact that you’re using a 3rd party service like SocialToo or others which auto-sends that, and often Auto-follows on your behalf :)

So if you have a boatload of followers like I do (Hey I’m no @guykawasaki) But I do have a fair number of followers, many of which happen to reside in my own industrie(s) You’ll tend to find that by following a lot of people, a lot of people will often follow you back.

So in that first test, @girlkawasaki wanted followers for the same reasons I do (People to learn and share with) so she followed a bunch of the people I (@cxi) happen to have been following and a number of them ~half followed her back.  And this trend would carry on for some time, of people following her either directly (a response to being followed) or randomly based upon tweets, comments and interaction.

So the next phase of this, once @girlkawasaki was seen to have a comfortable following of stable tweets, I then tried to follow everyone (minus spammers and locked accounts) that happened to be *Following* her ~650 people were following @girlkawasaki which were then followed.

This is where it gets interesting.  You might think “I’ll get a mass of followers instantly!”  But that isn’t true and isn’t the case, because people use different services which have large databases with different scrubbing and updating routines.   The result turns out to be that after the first hour of following ~650 people,  ~130 twitter accounts followed back.

This is after the first hour ofcourse, and after several hours we’ll see how the numbers reflect.    I’m not saying you’re guaranteed to get hundreds of followers if you follow everyone who is following @girlkawasaki, however after one full day I’ll update this to include what the final number looks like.    The account I used in this test is indeed an actual real twitter account so these are real live and valid numbers to be working with. :)

This is not a test of a Denial of Service, more of an interest of parties out there (like me) who want to follow more people and want more followers so we can continue our conversation in life, in Tweetdom and most importantly with ourselves :)

This is no disrespect to anyone who follows @girlkawasaki and are interesting in what she tweets (both actual tweets and her wonderful blog posts :)) Just think how many followers you get by consequence when you don’t fall into that small criteria of auto-followers :)

Thanks, and don’t hesitate to ask any questions or leave any comments on your success! :)

Control Group: 373 followers in 17hrs, for 56% followback!

When that’s out of 650 that’s pretty amazing!

On the 12 seconds of Tweetdeck my true love gave to me

Raise your hand if you use Tweetdeck! Yes I know you do, we all do.

You ever sit there and wonder what that little image  is up in the control section? A click on it will reveal much excitement to be had!

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Simply clicking that little 12 will bring up this prompt: Asking you for your 12seconds.tv creds!

Then, get ready for it, because all of a sudden you have access to Video in Tweetdeck!

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OMFG What is going on here? Why are there videos in Tweet Deck? This is actually kind of cool!

 

 

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Hovering over it will prompt you to Play the clip, or click the arrow and Whoa! Wait a minute you can RT from here as well?!

image RT cxi: 12seconds – http://12seconds.tv/channel/cxi/64782

#Playing in TweetDeck

imageIt’ll grey out your background while it displays video! 

Okay, this all seems a bit weird.  I thought we could only interact with each other in 140 character segments (Less in a reply) but now we can suddenly interact in 12 second segments?    Sure, you might think 12 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot, You say I want more, I want 12 times 12 seconds to get my point across! But seriously, that’s Gross But seriously, you can say a lot in 12 seconds and this gets to that point.  The first time you’ll realize just how long of a time 12 seconds indeed is :)

*I won’t even mention the iPhone Application they announced on the 18th! ;*

How cool can this possibly be? Think about it.  It’s been integrated into Tweetdeck for how long now? And we’ve never even noticed it?  I think it’s time we take notice (Especially with the TweetDeck Holiday update coming Dec 24th! hooray! :))

As always you can find me on twitter at @cxi but you can also find me on 12seconds @cxi!

So get out there, give it a try, add me in my shaven and unshaven form and lets celebrate the 12 seconds of christmas together!

The CWUG Joins Twitter!

Hey everyone out there in the Chicago Windows Users Group world, Let’s welcome @CWUG to the world of Twitter!

What does this mean for those of us from the CWUG, as well as those of us on Twitter?

NOW! Every link we go to look for from the Facebook, or someone is looking for information about the Meetings, other Mini-Meetings, Nightly Conferences, etc! This will be a repository of that information so you don’t have to search in a million places in order to find it!

So, add @CWUG to your Twitter account and lets make CWUG work for you!

Thanks! @CXI

Downgrading Twitter Tools

One of our Twitter Tools wasn’t working (Damn upgrading accidentally!)

If you’re one of those folks who has upgraded Twitter Tools beyond 1.1b1 and want to get it working again, here are the steps I’ve taken (consistently) to get it working.

Deactivate Twitter Tools:

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Downgrade Twitter Tools with version 1.1b1 (size:69,478)

Upload twitter-tools.php into the /wp-content/plugins/twitter-tools directory

Drop your Database (wp_ak_twitter) – phpMyAdmin if you can

DROP TABLE `wp_ak_twitter`;

Activate Twitter Tools

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Tweet a bit in the hopes it makes a difference (It won’t :))

And eventually, after an unknown period of time (perhaps tied to API calls) it will start working.

Tweets will then show up on your blog, and when you post entries to your blog, they will tweet on Twitter on your behalf.   Typically, once you’ve done this it should work within 1-2 hrs.

Disclaimer: This is for people who use Twitter Tools and it stops working after upgrading.  I’m not sure why, nor do I really care why, when it fulfills a specific purpose for me :)

Terror in Mumbai – Twitter and the Media

This is a terror event like no other, one which has been prolonged by the use of technology, adhoc and otherwise.    A call out from the users of the service Twitter requested on #mumbai that the Live Media Coverage being broadcast by news networks such as NDTV and CNN-IBN may have made the situation ‘worse’ than ‘better’ by not only letting those “on the street” know what is going on, but also informing those on the inside in the form of Terrorists.

So this situation almost on the flipside.   The Broadcast media apparently making the situation worse (Not to be outdone by a major network broadcasting on-air the room number of a hostage) and the AdHoc (Twittersphere) using this opportunity to spread information that is beneficial to all of those involved.

Such notable ones as:

  • The number of tweets about people heading to hospitals to donate blood is astonishing!
  • @aadisht: #mumbai Holy Family Hospital has enough blood; please donate elsewhere if you do.
  • rockzapper: #mumbai NDTV still showing commando movements. Doesn’t it get it? This can cause a grim situation for police.
  • @blogdiva: more numbers to call re Mumbai crisis : US helpline 888-407-4747 Brazilian help line 9820686143 (C) CNN IBN FA 1-613-996-8885
  • blogdiva: if you are in Mumbai and want to donate blood, call 922 222 1947 and tell them you want to donate. They’ll get back to you when someone
  • CXI Our hearts go out to those suffering in Mumbai, as well as my friends and associations out there being personally impacted.

Never before in history have people had access to so much information, so real time, and so fast and available.  Some may feel that Twitter may be a hindrance to situations going on, however the spread of information by good people wanting to help has never been so prevalent as their ability to reach out and help, especially when times called for it most.

This is hard on everyone, and no one feels it so much as those in Mumbai and with friends and family who live there.  Our hearts are out to you, and may this catastrophe be resolved with no more innocent deaths or bloodshed.

Tomorrow won’t be known as Thanksgiving, but Thanksliving for those who can survive this horrific time and be stronger for it, in light of desperate and terrible situations.

Be safe, and be well.