The Avatars on Twitter

The idea of communicating under 140 characters would have made the ancient Spartans proud. When Twitter started off, I was skeptical how could something so inane survive.. It was neither as personal as a SMS, nor as captivating as Facebook (when accessing through computers), or as descriptive as a blog... But 6 years later (i joined Twitter around 2007), and with over half a billion registered users and one the top visited sites worldwide, the small Bluebird is indeed flying high.

Now-a-days watching the twitter feeds, and knowing more about the various twitter profiles has become a regular feature in my digital life. Most Twitter handles are there for the purpose of recognition & affiliation...and to fulfill their purpose, they take various avatars on Twitter

Here are 6 popular avatars, I see in my network:

Premier: These are people who try and create content that are exclusive.. this could include tweets which are personal, stand-alone quotes, breaking news (which could also include retweets of News item from the source)... They want to see that their tweets are different or freshest, so that the same might be picked up by others in their network

Surfers: Like riding the wave, Surfers are people who would look at the trending topics and create their own tweets using the popular #Hashtags. Be it any marketing contest, or any other trending topic, they create a tweet just to catch the wave

Controversial-ist: Mostly trolls, who would have a different point of view to the popular perception..leading to a shock effect; I believe most trolls are harmless people who try and bask in others glory just by antagonizing them

Back-scratchers: You-follow-me, I-follow-you; you-retweet me, I-retweet-you... I’ve seen enough and more of these people on Twitter. Some do it out of basic courtesy... but I’ve experienced instances where I get rough message such as, “I followed you; Please follow me back”.

Rehashers: Twitter is used for self promotion. Less number of people have much to say; most have less to say... but there some, who says pretty much the same thing again and again... be it a quote, a link to their blog, or an image/video.

Conversationalist: Some people follow celebrity (read as any popular person on twitter with huge number of followers) twitter handles, and reply to their tweets under the hope that more number of people get to read their response/tweet.

Most twitter profiles are a combination of two or more avatars that are mentioned above...

Know of anymore avatars that you experienced in twitter, please do let me know

Cheers,

Santosh

Image courtesy: http://freetoolsntips.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/twitter-mosaic-wallpapers.jpg

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