[A guest post from YMC member Amanda M. below]
A friend at Ogilvy recently sent me the article “In Praise of Obscurity” by Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine. In it, Thompson makes the case that social networking begins to break down when the number of Twitter followers gets too large. He argues that when a person (or organization)’s account grows to a certain size, the account holder becomes de-humanized and “larger than life.” The audience members begin to monitor themselves, afraid they’ll say something stupid. It’s almost as if Thompson is comparing Twitter to a college classroom – people rarely speak out in a large lecture, intimidated by its size, yet feel comfortable voicing an opinion in a more intimate small classroom setting.
While I find Thompson’s ideas interesting, I’m not sure that I agree with them. First of all, I don’t agree that a larger audience is a bad thing. More followers on Twitter = more people hearing your message. At the end of the day, for a marketing professional, that’s a good thing (assuming your message is carefully planned).
It is also important to remember that Twitter is an online space. It is one thing to enter a large classroom filled with bodies, where you can actually see how many people will listen when you speak. Though a large number of followers on Twitter may be easily noticeable, a number on a screen is far less intimidating than physically seeing that many people in a room. While I think it is highly unlikely it will stop people from tweeting at all, it may encourage them to think before they speak (well, type) – which is a good thing. This will limit the people who respond on a whim and in the end encourage a more intelligent discussion.
I’d love to hear what the rest of the Young MC community thinks about this. Is a large number of followers a blessing or a curse (or neither)?
Say what you will about how Tiger Woods handled his recent scandal, but if there’s one golfer who we shouldn’t be surprised about when he screws up his PR, it’s the legendary 
The confusion for me came once I pressed that accept button. What I found was a weird mix and combo between Facebook and Twitter. At first glance, Buzz was basically Twitter, with a comment and similar function to the Facebook status updates. Easy enough. But with Google Buzz out for two weeks now, I still am just not feeling it. I am constantly seeing the new Tweet/ buzzes whatever you want to call them pop up throughout the day and since it is already linked to my gmail I am always checking them. But for me, I feel like my Google Buzz has been taken over by the couple of people who have actually figured out how to link Google Buzz to their Twitter /Facebook accounts (which I hear has problems all in its own). 
development outside their 9-5 lives, the more we become aware of the actual people who write those witty columns. And the more we learn about that dude who sits down the hall who never makes eye contact with anyone. We all have our professional lives, but so many of us also have personal interests and affiliations that overlap and echo much of what we do for a living. Each of us has a personal brand to promote alongside the corporate brands that we’re linked to.
