I don’t like the assumption that lays under Tim Harford’s analysis. Why should we presume that twitter cascades are anything but rare and tiny? Retweeting and mass attention is weighted as the rarity that it is. How often, in a world controlled and directed by users, do you think it is possible to sync up the attention of a large number of people all at one time?
I can also tell you that Harford is wrong qualitatively. There are people who i follow and who follow me with larger follower counts. When those uberusers retweet things i’ve said, i immediately notice an uptick in participation. How much is that participation worth to me? Depends on the subject and who retweets as to what the nature of the response is.
But therein lies the difference. I use twitter as a medium for interacting with others, not as a medium to broadcast to the largest group of people. The way that people like @acarvin have managed to build and more importantly sustain such a large following is by interacting w/ users, and keeping open that possibility of interaction.
Analogously there was a dustup recently over @planetmoney’s coverage of jonathancoulton questioning whether JoCo was just a gimmick or not. JoCo pointed out that the sadsack analysis of what it is that he does makes incorrect fundamental assumptions as to what success is in the age of the internet, and importantly, what the progress of success is.
What does reaching all users on the internet actually get you? Can you handle all of that attention at once? Do you have the capacity for either monetizing or otherwise capitalizing on that attention? Because that’s the difference between 1 hit wonders w/ 15 minutes of fame, and people like @acarvin. And if you can’t, you may be better off increasing the quality of interactions with your users, not the quantity.
