From lists of A-Bloggers to lists of A-Tweeters
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Small lunch time rant ahead:
Just when I thought the whole era of inter-designer/developer ass kissing was kind of over I ran into 40 web developers to follow on Twitter and 44 web designers to follow on Twitter. It reminded me of the whole 'A bloggers' thing from several years ago. You know the time when everyone in the land of web development and design would link to the same old blogs, almost because one felt they were pretty much obliged to do so if one wanted to get the whole professional image going. You'd see the same old links on every damn web developer/designer blog on the internet, making it hard to discover anything you hadn't seen a million times already (on the same day).
Now there's these two posts on ThinkVitamin, a blog I probably don't need to introduce to you all.
Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, follow these people, Ryan? Because everyone else does? When reading through the comments it becomes apparent that I'm not the only one with this question in mind.
In the comments below the designers list Bradley Wright makes some painfully valid points:
Sure: the title says "44 web designers that you should follow on Twitter". The list already stands at 45, which strongly suggests that you're doing this to please the right people, as opposed to making the hard decisions about who are *really* the right 44 to follow.
Similarly, the high number of entrants also smacks of appealing to the designers' egos.
Further to the appealing point, you then proceeded to "@username you're on the list lol" most of them on Twitter to notify them that they had been listed in this. It's brown-nosing, plain and simple.
Back-slapping comes into the fact that there are almost no "unknowns", who might be able to provide more value for their followers than already famous people with no time for the more personal approach that can be valuable over Twitter. This has been mentioned in other comments on this very page.
Bradley Wright
Further down the thread he gets labeled a 'Troll' by Ryan Carson, who wrote the article. Funnily enough though the developer list post comments show that Bradley is spot on with his comments:
- cal: :`(
- ryancarson: Argh! Cal - I'll add you. My bad :(
Anyway, you'll get the picture I guess. Do we need lists like these? Probably not. Most web developers/designers are probably already following these people so to me lists like these are pointless butt-kissing. So here we are, from lists of A-Bloggers to lists of A-Tweeters. Provided by an A-blog.
Finally, before anyone thinks otherwise: I really don't have any kind of desire to be on anyone's 'list of so-called interesting people'. Especially not if there's ZERO mention of what it would be that makes me interesting. This post wasn't made out of envy for not being listed. Heck, my tweets are probably not all that interesting anyway :P
- Marco (not an A-Blogger and most likely an uninteresting tweeter)
At 11 March '09 - 14:25 Ian Pouncey wrote:
Guess what? There was little to show that they were talking about web design on twitter. Perhaps because twitter isn’t just a tool for self promotion, and most people use it to update friends and family on what is going on in their lives.
Nicole Ashley may be the number web designer on twitter but of the 22 updates she has made the closest to design enlightenment is ‘Picking out some lovely colours’. I think it is worth repeating: the number 1 web designer that Ryan Carson recommends we follow has made a total of 22 updates.
If this list was ’44 Web Designers Who Use Twitter’ then fine, but this is ’44 Web Designers to Follow on Twitter’, the implication being that they are worth following for their insights on design. It is hard to see this as anything other that the back slapping and brown nosing that Marco and Brad describe.