Twitter is a competitive sport

Rick Mans

6 Comments

June 19, 2009

Category : Social

Last month I noticed an interesting Tweet by Dave Winer about Jason Calacanis not being #1 on Twitter any more. After giving some thought I decided to respond to Dave that I wasn't aware of the fact that Twitter was a competitive sport. Dave replied clearly, that Twitter is competitive, like everything is. He is right, Twitter is a competitive sport, however is there a way to become #1? Is the ranking based on followers, following, number of Tweets, number of Retweets, number of replies, a mixed of all those indicators.

For example this a graph created via Twittercounter:

This graph shows the number of followers Ron Tolido, Lee Provoost and I have at the moment of writing this blog. Is there way to say who is#1? Clearly Ron is number one in the most followers, however is he winning or is winning based on something harder to measure, such as attention? With Twitter and social media being a competitive sport it is hard to identify when you score (assuming that social media is a competitive game based on scoring) and when you are being scored at. One thing is very clear and that is if you are not participating, you are certainly not scoring and certainly not winning. It doesn't mean that if you participate you will win, however it will mean that you have an opportunity to win.

While participating in social media you will win some, you will lose some and sometimes your best just isn't good enough. However not participating at will definitely result in losing. Not only losing in social media, but also losing customers, losing business, losing market share, losing revenue and perhaps even losing your business in the end. You have to be in this game, otherwise you will definitively lose.

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Rick Mans is Information Architect and a social media evangelist within Capgemini. You can follow and connect with him via Twitter or Delicious

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6 Comments Leave a comment

Arjan Tupan:
June 19, 2009 at 10:28am

Does this make Twitter/Social Media an Olympic Sport, where participating is more important than winning?
More seriously, I think your right. And for that matter, Social Media is a competive sport with different categories. I guess you win when you get more out of it than you planned for. New relations, new clients, more client intimacy, new business, etcetera.

rimans:
June 19, 2009 at 10:48am

Winning is still important, however it still starts with participating. I do think you will also win if you get out what you planned for, not necessarily more than you planned for or more than your competitors do. The scoring system for this sport is still something that needs more elaboration.

Arjan Tiessen:
June 19, 2009 at 6:04pm

I have quite some friends who do not use social media a lot (some not at all)...are they losers? Are they lonely? Don't I follow them? Do they feel lost? I think in personal/social life sometimes it's very good to step back for a sec and reconsider the value of people instead of the value of media they use...

rimans:
June 19, 2009 at 8:47pm

Arjan, I think the value of people still is more important than the value of the media they are using. However due to immense growth of social media, there is also an immense digital divide to those who (can) use social media, and those who don't / can't. This divide will only grow and you are right that is not about loosing, although it will a lot harder to be part of group.
In case of enterprises it is losing when these are not participating in social media. If enterprise A is not participating, enterprise B will participate and will get the attention that was meant for enterprise A.

Arjan Tiessen:
June 19, 2009 at 9:26pm

Sure. I am trying to play advocate of the devil. SO let's comntinue with that...
Take the example of Ryanair: Not really a 2.0 company, though still getting the marketing attention it needs (and still one of the very few airliners to make a decent turnover and even profit).
I fully agree with the divide thing, I am just wondering when the divide will become really crucial: At the moment it is certainly not. If you step out of the tech- savvy-crowd (take me for example.. :)) there are really not many people who care about 2.0
So in terms of people it might take a while, and as companies are usually laggin behind their customers I presume that for companies it will take even longer before 2.0 will be inevitable..
Still, I like your post. I take it as an application of innovation theory (first adopters etc etc...)

Nikhil Nulkar:
June 21, 2009 at 8:49pm

Thanks Rick, read it the other day on your personal blog as well... reading the comments here now! :-)
I feel that we need more serious parameters to understand how we can measure where we are, in the race. we need to be more specific when we say A is #1 or otherwise. For me what value it brings is more important than nos. :-)
Arjan Tiessen - I know where you are coming from. I see that divide even within my friend circle/family etc here. Half of them dont even know what social media (facebook/twitter) is, however thats where the trick is. If you (or Enterprise A) is able to adopt early and understand its benefits, you would certainly reap first movers advantage.
It is this race that a person/co. needs to participate as early as they can to understand how they can benefit from it.

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