The Twitter Saint, the Narcissist and 10 other types of twitter users

‘Thanks for following me! Check out www....’ I was really impressed by the user. She clearly understood the word ‘social’. I enthusiastically sent a direct message with a question about her presentation I attended earlier that day. I never received an answer.
It was the first auto-reply I received through Twitter. At the time I was unaware that I was dealing with an automatic reply. Nowadays I consider the auto-replies as one of the less favourite emails in the inbox.


Twitter users in boxes

The good thing is it made me set up this informal list of twitter user types.

Twitter user type description

• The saint: Uses twitter as how it was meant: a micro blog. The saint applies most of the time the etiquette. Look at the Chris Brogan’s concise etiquette guide for further information.
• The narcissist: ‘It is ‘me’ time on twitter. I don’t have to talk to you. I am way too interesting for you.' This user drops some subjects and doesn’t interact. They don’t retweet or show any form of interaction except of course the auto-reply.
• The collector: ‘Linkedin doesn’t show more than 500 connections. Don’t worry I found a new item to collect: followers.’
• The ghost: ‘I follow you and as soon as you follow me, I unfollow you. Don’t think I was ever there?’
• The PR agent: ‘I solely tweet the news of somebody else.’
• The counterfeiter: Does do the same as PR, but with different objectives.
• The ‘Do what you tell me’: ‘The consultant told me that it was good to have on other link to get more visitors at my website.’
• The Tweet & # promotion team: ‘I tweet. You retweet me. He reweets that you retweeted me. Or let’s # and send our followers to another tool to show the # conversation.’
• The Stock market addict: Shortens its links solely to be able to track the numbers of clicks. ‘I need to satisfy my brains with growing numbers.’
• The Fatalist: ‘I tweet to say I tweet, but I don’t understand it. A stranger reads the one sentence non-issues of another stranger. It is destined to die out within two years.’
• The Wannabe: At a party. To person A: ‘Oh, yes I have a twitter account. I am totally in to tweets.’ To person B: ‘Yes I agree, it is just a trend without any meaning. I have a twitter account just to know why I don’t like it.’
• In the old days: ‘In the old days you would sent people that attended your party ‘A thank you note.’ I do the same with my followers. It is just showing you have proper manners.’

What type of user are you? Or can you come up with other types of twitter users?

As a user of different twitter accounts, I fit in more types. Earlier in this email I already referred to Chris Brogan’s blog. It is a good guide (or read his book social media 101) to find out what people find acceptable and annoying. The highlight of the guide: Be yourself!