One account for tweets & one account for replies?

Today I started an experiment on Twitter. I have been a Twitter user for a long time now and have amassed a nice little following with more than 5000 followers. One concern I have had since I have passed more than a few hundred followers has been on how to communicate. Most people consider Twitter a ‘communication’ medium. Communication assumes two way conversations.

That, however, is not how I use Twitter.

At The Next Web Conference Chris Sacca explained the audience that he felt responsible for his audience. He felt compelled to write funny, interesting and thought provoking messages. He didn’t want to bore them. I agree and always do my best to entertain and inspire my audience with every tweet I post.

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So how do you talk to a lot of people AND reply to each and every one with a personal reply? Sure, the reply itself is very important to the receiver, but how interesting is it for the other readers? I’m aiming for 100% interestingness in my tweets. How about if I slip down to 50% if only 5 out of 5 tweets are original and the rest would be replies? Or how about 1 in 10?

As an experiment I decided to set-up a new Twitter account which I will use ONLY to reply to users. My personal account is @Boris and my ‘reply’ account is @BorisReplies. My strategy is going to be to reply to every reply or retweet to @Boris on @BorisReplies.

I am ALSO going to reply on @Boris sometimes but only if I think my reply is interesting to everyone else who follows me on @Boris.

Some people have told me that this is NOT how Twitter works, that this is contrary to what Twitter stands for, that it will confuse people and isn’t ‘right’. My answer: nobody, not even Twitter, knows what is ‘Right’ for Twitter. We just don’t. Experimenting with different uses is good and will lead us to new and interesting ways of using Twitter.

I will do a follow-up post in about a week or so with the results. Let me know what you think about this experiment by tweeting to @Boris and I will retweet to you via @BorisReplies.