It happened again.

I got this note from Twitter.

If you can’t read that, here’s what it says:

Hi, Trent Ernst.

tammyhowell (tammyhowell) is now following your tweets on Twitter.

A little information about tammyhowell:

31 followers

57 tweets

following 13 people.

I get a note like this every couple or three days. I know I could turn of notifications but it’s not the fact that I get them that bugs me. I like getting them. It makes me feel wanted. And it means that I can go in and follow those people who are interesting. And that’s the trouble. You see, it’s the line “A little information about.” bugs me.

Because the “information” Twitter provides is mostly useless. This isn’t information about Tammy, it’s just stats. And sure, there are people wiser in the ways of Twitter that can parse those stats to their own end, but here’s the deal. Twitter is about Social Networking. What they provide is numbers.

It doesn’t let me know, for instance, that Tammy is a wedding photographer out of Louisville. That she’s a DWFer. It doesn’t even give me her Twitter bio (“A Photographer, wife, and mom, not necessarily in that order”) or even bother to show me her latest tweet. It just tells me how many followers she has, how many tweets she has, and how many people she’s following.

It wouldn’t be hard to tell me a little useful information about her. Just post her bio. Maybe her latest tweet. And, if you really want to, include the stats, too, because I know that some people still care about the Twitter horse race. But for most of us, we just want to know who these people are who want to be our friends.

Thanks for listening.

Trent Ernst (eyefordetail)

361 Followers

1,012 Tweets

719 Following

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