"The actors and jesters are here
The stage is in darkness and clear
For raising the curtain
And no-ones quite certain whose play it is
-- "If Everyone Was Listening", Supertramp

Erik Qualman wonders if on Twitter anyone is listening.

He answers himself with a "no", arguing that listening and partcipiating doesn't scale:

"As more people join Twitter, this type of one-to-one relationship will be difficult to maintain. Many celebrities already have "ghost tweeters."

In the future, instead of getting a witty and salient reply from a CEO or well-informed employee, you'll most likely get an uninspired reply from a call center (tweet center?) in New Delhi -- if you're lucky to get a response at all."

Yes -- but no.

With Many Listening, One Scales Infintely

Twitter is not a one-to-many or many-to-one medium; Twitter is a one-to-one-with-many-listening medium.

That one talk with one customer at one moment is overheard by tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands.

The uniqueness of that one moment when one person took time for ME is such that people broadcast the interaction and amplify it.

This is demonstrated by the fact that Erik didn't have the chance to have a one-on-one interaction with JetBlue while he does have knowledge of their one-on-one Twitter activity... QED.

The CEO's Tweet Isn't The Reason For The Tweeter

But face it: the reason people tweet and the reason people follow eachother's tweet is not because JetBlue, Zappos or BBGeeks are online and might respond.

People primarily tweet among each other about the mundane.

In numbers & pretty charts (tm) that means that people are more likely to talk about bagels than about Tim Horton's.

Now I'm off to Twitter to follow Erik Qualman whose article I learned about via a tweet from Glenn Gabe...

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you!