The great Jeremiah Owyang Twitter expansion of 2007

Dec 11, 2007 | blog

I want to thank Jeremiah Owyang for his Some Conversations have shifted to Twitter blog post earlier today.  It gave literally hundreds of people the opportunity to find new people to interact with.

The post went up sometime before 10am (Central Time), and Jeremiah Tweeted about the post on Twitter shortly thereafter.  Within just a few minutes, there were over 20 comments on this post with people giving feedback and sharing their Twitter profile links, inviting others to follow them and join in their conversation.

Within three hours the comment count had climbed to over 160 with more streaming in constantly.  This desire to interact, to connect, share ideas, and communicate is nothing new, but what followed on Twitter is the bigger story.

We can talk numbers, and its at least someplace to start.  For example I found nearly 100 new people to follow, and about 80 people have chosen to follow my Twitter postings.  Fellow Twitters had similar experiences today and in some cases doubled their follower counts.

However, what’s at the root of this enormous expansion in Twitter following is the desire to build community.  To interact with more people, from different places and expand our peer networks.  The numbers are simply a statistic to track, but the real important part is that I was able to find 100 or more interesting, intelligent, fun people that I wanted to add to my daily or weekly conversations.  I’m also flattered to have so many people interested in what I bring to the table as well.

The net result for the next few days will be learning how to deal with a fire hose of Twitters, a constant barrage of information.  Currently I’m trying to read as much as possible as it passes by, but I’m quickly learning to skim and watch for the topics I should read and not absorb it all.

The post itself is a great piece about why Twitter is a useful tool, and should be read simply on it’s own.  But I bet if you go read the post, the comments will pull you in and soon you too will be a part of the community-building exercise that has morphed out of a good blog post.

By the way, at the time of this writing, there were in excess of 300 commenter’s, sharing and building their communities.  Are you?