What Type of Twitter User are You?

One of my 2009 goals was to get to the bottom of Twitter and its users. What makes them tick? And why the hell is a service that only gives you 140 characters to express yourself so popular?

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Twitter myself. I am starting to understand the power, but I still have to find my voice. You can of course follow me to see my progress. I started by taking a good look at the users and what they expect to get out of Twitter.

There’s a lot of variety, but in general I found 5 types of users:

• Many users are there to sell you something, usually they pimp their blog or site. I’m not always sure of the added value. For instance, what’s the point of a competition like this?  why bother? I have much respect for Daniel Scocco, the author of the blog. He has excellent insights into online business. But I’m not sure I’d like to put an add in my Tweet for a chance to win a $30 product. If I really want to use the theme, $30 is not going to stop me.
• Another type of Tweet I see a lot is the link. Guy Kawasaki is one supporter of this approach. He advocates that any Tweet should contain links. I’m not sure if this should be the only use of Twitter, but there are some very interesting people doing this. For instance, the 1Up Retronauts.
• My preferred Tweet for now is those sharing “insights”. I mean that in the broadest sense possible. One I really like is Merlin Man’s Tweet. Although he is on a break now.
• One of the most popular Twitter persona’s is the chatter. Sharing the life of their cat, their car and pretty much anything else. Their Tweet’s are very conversational and it’s sometimes hard to filter out the nonsense. Some claim this is the sole purpose of Twitter’s existence. It’s sort of IRC all over again. I used to love it, until I noticed how many hours of my life went into it.
• A more recent development is the appearance of the big corp shill. At first you might not like them, but I’ve found at least one which I think is interesting. I’m not sure if you can call the MarsPhoenix lander Tweet a shill, but it’s worth a click in any case.
• And then there are a few that cannot be classified. In many cases those are applications, like the DVD quote quiz.