Hey Twitter power users: have you figured out what makes people follow? I see so many tweets going ultra-viral, from accounts with just a few hundred followers. I would think with many thousands of engagements more of them would convert. So if not engagement, what does work?
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Replying to @WilliamAEden
AFAICT, the high-order bit is being someone who people are interested in for things they do off Twitter.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @WilliamAEden
I experimented quite a bit with my bio. It's easy to rewrite my bio so it will attract followers much faster than my current bio. But the bio I have seems to do a better job at getting the followers I'd enjoy knowing myself.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @WilliamAEden
Bios I like - and will instantly follow - convey optimism, curiosity, and are both unique and genuine expressions of who the person is. Perhaps a third of the bios on this list https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/lists/tomorrow/members … have that character.
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Replying to @WilliamAEden
It's a bit of a generic laundry list. The most interesting bit to me (if I hadn't heard nice things via friends-of-friends!) would be the bit about history and anthropology, juxtaposed with the tech. But there's nothing unique in the bio.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
Thanks, I appreciate it. It was my first pass, honestly reflects the subjects I think about most often, trying to give people an easy way to slot me into their pattern recognition...
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Replying to @WilliamAEden
I'm sure for lots of people that's great. But at least for me I'm often happiest finding people who I have a hard time slotting into my pattern recognition. Not all, of course, but a lot.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @WilliamAEden
Difficult to write that without it sounding like it's a bit pretentious or self-righteous. But I think it's really just a personality characteristic, not something consciously chosen.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
No, not pretentious at all, I really like that kind of person too, just not sure how to signal it in 280 characters yet. When I see an uninformative bio I basically just disregard it and look at tweets or other context to decide. Hmmm.
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Well, for me, "The secure transport of light" or "Fallibilist. Optimist" etc are at least 10x "Worked with Thiel on VC". I know (a) this person is an original; and (b) I have some genuine overlap in interests with them.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @WilliamAEden
For me, "Searching for the numinous" really sums up a lot of my life, in a way that's meaningful to me. And a surprising number of friendships have started with someone saying that they'd seen my bio, loved it, and they were, in some measure, doing the same with their life.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
Thanks, this is interesting, I will definitely give my bio some more thought. Maybe I should steal from my old OKCupid profile
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