After Kutcher-CNN Race on Twitter - Should Twitter remove Follower Count?

It's so pathetic that the amount of twitter followers now matters to everyone. I don't give a rat's ass about what Ashton Kutcher is doing at this exact moment or what's happening at the CNN headquarters. It's lame that popularity is now measured in twitter followers. To quote a horrible movie; who ever wins, we loose.

As far as Twitter. I personally could not care one way or the other. This whole thing was a media circus from day one between Kutcher and CNN. With Ted Turner (Former owner of CNN) getting involved, Larry King issuing a challenge to Kutcher on the air and so on. I think Twitter can be used for the right purposes such as we do here on Current when we post to @News or other channels about articles we think deserve a peek.
Marketing companies probably love the 'followers' since this will help them get messages out. YouTube had similar issues with 'Views' where people actually bought views to seem more popular. When YouTube implemented an algorithm to weed out fraudulent views all view counts went back to normal and nobody had anything to gain from inflated views. Good or bad, I think followers are there to stay.

Simply. Yes. Do celebrities and media have to pervert everything as a popularity contest?

Twitter is a lame Fad...

Personally I do think that Twitter should remove the follower count...because its pointless and people care more about that number than what they are writing.

That being said, they will never remove the follower count for a few reasons.

1) people would loose interest in the site...on the internet people love to be seen and be seen as popular. People love to show off their friends lists and followers across all social platforms because it makes them feel like a quasi celebrity in their own right. Im not criticizing this because everyone loves to feel like theyre being listened to and this isnt a bad thing. Simply put though, remove the follower count on Twitter and I guarantee they would loose a good sized chunk of their users.

2) Business. Much like the individual users, businesses see Twitter as a viable medium to gain attention for advertorial purposes. Viral marketing companies boast the number of Twitter followers they can garner a company (silly isnt it?). And bloggers, writers and videographers use it to leverage ad sales by having a number to show potential sponsors just how many eyes are on them each day. Without the follower count they have no metrics to show and no reason to utilize Twitter.

Basically the follower count is not going away, if it is, it will be the worst move on behalf of Twitter. Like I said, I personally think the follower count is stupid, but without it Twitter would loose a large chunk of their users simply because there would be no incentive to participate.

@basement dad shattered this record in less than 24 hours with over 300,000 followers. behold the power of the internet on steroids.

My bad Clips. I dont think Current considers itself a news site. My issue was why is this the first thing I see, like why is this deemed more important some of the other stuff going on? I guess it was a backwards swipe at my lack of understanding of the rating system despite the fact Mario tried to explain it. And at the time this article only had 19 views and 2 responses and I was like, how is this important? How is it that this shows up first? It doesnt make sense to me.

As for Twitter, I used to have one and then I realized how stupid it is. So I deleted it. But Im a back charity, community service person so I created a new one to tweet about upcoming projects I am participating in to give them exposure and possible get people like Austin Kutcher to get involved as well. I think Twitter depends on what you use it for. If youre writing crap about your daily activities like eating or work or other stuff that no one would really be bothered to care about, then it stupid. But I have noticed a lot of celebrities using their twitters for the same thing as me. Hugh Jackman in particular and Austin throughout the CNN battle as well. While it was a stupid contest, I suppose they put meaning into it. They're doing stuff for Malaria. And to think, he started it by stating if he got more users he'd play dingdongditch to some random older celebrity I cant remember.

seriously who cares...

why does any one care and how is this going to effect my world?

@Freaked - Weekends are a sore topic, we have been asking but never get an answer. something about being short staffed. Yet they have like hundreds of people posting stories under staff badges, so not sure how that works.

@Snigg - The Lindsey E-Harmony actually had people posting asking why that was in news. No response. In response to all the "other news" that gets pushed aside. I am not entirely sure that Current.com really considers itself a "News" site. They have other channels, Green, Music, Movies etc so that is probably why the content is mixed up on Front and Featured spots.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

twitter is interesting, but really, who gives a shit? twitter is totally unimportant to most ppl.

Clips. I follow several people Ras_menelk, DeliaArtist, Get_cape, you and a few others. I see how this is frustrating to all of you that post a lot. I usually just read. But I get pissed to when the same story shows up over and over with people just changing the headlines. And I agree, weekdends are so horrible that I don't even bother with current. I often wonder how an item is picked for front page. Thats content I tend to click on first. Another truly annoying thing are Current Pods. They make a pod it ends up bouncing all the news and often the pod is not even news. The other day for instance "Lindsey Lohan E-Harmony" and that wasn't even made by Current. That thing was on TUbe and every other share site. so what gives on that? Suddenly Murders, Quakes, Pirates, National Security etc all goes down for Lindsey Lohan E-Harmony. I agree, looks like the so called editors need a quick journalism 101

I see your point. I get frustrated on weekends when the same news are on the home page for three days. If you own a TV station and run a "user submitted content" web site are you telling me nobody is working for 3 days? Come on! My newsgroup on Yahoo does a better job on that. As far asDup'ss. That is possible the most annoying thing on Current. Some people keep posting stories just using different urls from diff. publications. Not only does it get confusing but cluttered. Why cant people do a simple search and if the article is there, move on.

I think we should address the issue of Posting and Current.com Editors and what and why an article is "Featured" I think many of us need to get clarification which may help us in posting future articles of interest.

Here is a perfect example: At 7:49AM ET We posted an article about a File Sharing site "Pirate Bay" in Sweden that was found guilty of copyright infringement. http://current.com/items/89976091_court-says-file-sharing-site-violated-copyrigh...
-- No interest.

2 Hours later a different user posts the same story using a different URL http://current.com/items/89976231_court-jails-pirate-bay-founders.htm
-- Featured News 10 minutes after post.

3 Hours later a Current.com Staff member post the same story using a different URL http://current.com/items/89975951_pirate-bay-trial-verdict-reached-guilty.htm
-- Featured Home Page & News immediately.

So it is clearly not the News, it is an editorial issue.

I'm more interested in the battle between someecards and Martha Stewart

http://chartbeat.com/someecardsvsmartha/

Thanks for the comment. It's frustrating to us as well. But, as you are well aware, we have no control of what Current Editors will put on their Front, Featured or Channel pages. We provide an average of 20-30 articles a day, ranging from National and International News, Green and Environment, Music and Movie articles etc. We are sometimes as puzzled as you are as to why a certain article gets featured (or not). That is an Editorial decision that Current.com staff makes and we have no input on that. We have written to Current Staff several times and have yet to receive an answer.

Thanks for your comment, your support is appreciated. If all of us keep submitting a good mix of articles chances are that a broad audience will find what they are looking for :)

Leave the followers... Just cause the main stream users like Ashton Kutcher and CNN were fighting over followers doesn't mean that feature is useless. I am a graphic designer and when I try to find other new designers to follow I use their number of followers to help gauge how valuable others think their tweets are. I don't see how a battle for followers is such a big deal. The only people who are complaining are the companies who are seeing their competitor's following list grow while theirs stays the same. A lot of them are mad because they are not on the recommended people to follow list when new users sign up. Maybe that is another way twitter can monetize. Auction off spaces on that list.

Once again I don't know why this is such a big fuss. All this talk about twitter removing the follower count seems to only be coming from the companies who are not "mastering" the medium and people who don't like or understand twitter.

Again more bullshit news that won't change the quality of our lives........

Clips, I love most of your posts but I fail to see the importance of this being the first post on the front page.

Just shows you that this whole twitter thing is nothing but a joke. The celebs now turned this into their own personal game.

It's a game and a big joke these days to gather a huge following on Twitter. It does nothing for real content it just turns the entire Twitter mess into an even bigger ego-fueled mess. Those that follow news, specialty content and relatives still have some legit use for Twitter. The rest is marketing - and a bad one at that. How many of these 1 Million so called 'fans' of Ashton Kutcher do you think will actually follow his daily Tweets.