Tag Archives: tremendous news

Jan 05

Why the Number of Followers, Friends and Connections No Longer Matter

35 Comments Written by in Social Media

I used to be very obsessed with the numbers. It started in high school. I was one of those kids you hated in math class who could carry the one (Dee you’d want to avoid me) and do fractions without a calculator.

I was the one the math teacher called on when no one else had the answer. He knew I did. Every time.

I sat in the front of the class so when I got my homework back, I could raise it high enough so those behind me could see my bright red “A.”

Yeah, I was that good with numbers.

So, when I started marketing online in 1998, I was obsessed with the numbers.

  • I would run reports to see how many were clicking on my banner ads.
  • I would view my web statistics every day to see if there was a bump in the numbers.
  • I would login to my Ultimate Bulletin Board (remember that) to see if any new members signed up.

Then, social media came around and my obsession became a super obsession (no, that’s not a typo). I was in it to win it. I was competing with others to see how quickly I could get my 1,000th follower on Twitter. Or my 15th friend on Facebook. Or my 2-millionith connection on LinkedIn.

I Only Cared About How Much I Scored

When I was in university, I played 2-years of varsity basketball. At the time, I was dating this ultra-competitive guy. He too played basketball, but at the college level (in Canada, there’s a BIG difference between university and college – there’s a Wikipedia entry that explains it all).

Despite the fact that we would never, ever play on the same team due to our different genders (if you didn’t get it – I’m a gal, he’s a guy) and different collegiate playing levels, he always wanted to know what I scored after each game and how many minutes I played.

My coach liked to huddle with the team after the game ended. We would shake our opponents’ hands, tell them that it was a good game, then meet our coach at the end of the bench for a post game pep talk.

Instead of running to the huddle, I would boot over to the scorer’s table to review my points scored and the minutes played so I could stuff those hefty numbers down my (ex) boyfriend’s throat.

After doing this several times, my coach beat me to the scorer’s table after one game, removed the scorer’s sheet and promised to bench me the rest of the season if I ever checked my points before huddling with the team.

So, I stopped looking at the numbers.

And shortly thereafter, I broke up with my ultra competitive, shallow, insecure boyfriend.

But, I digress…

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