This post about the types of people on Twitter just cracked me up.  It’s funny because it’s true, you know?

Anthony Stevens’ twelve types are:

1. GHOST: Starts Twittering, posts a handful of times, then disappears.
2. NERDCORE: Hopelessly geeky (and proud of it), writes tweets like this: “Linux.com states eDonkey as best P2P client on linux http://lin.cr/rf. But it was shutdown, wasn’t it? Can anyone confirm it?”
3. FLIRT: Writes a lot of tweets with the word “sexy” and “boobs” and “naked” (not necessarily in the same tweet).
4. WHORE: Shameless self-promoter of blog posts.  Has 10,000 followers.
5. WHORE IN TRAINING: Just like a WHORE, but sheepishly apologizes for it every now and then.  Wants 10,000 followers.
6. MR. GUILTY: Endless naughty-boy revelations about alcohol, gambling, or behaving badly.
7. ST. CRISPIN: Today is an opportunity! Carpe Diem! I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be alive on THIS VERY DAY!
8. HIPSTER: Goes to all the cool social networking events and meets with Loic and Scoble and Guy every month.  Lets you know about it.
9. POLITICAL HARRIDAN: Sends 140-character rants about this or that politician or policy proposal.
10. INQUISTOR: 90% of their tweets are questions to their “audience”.
11. DILBERT: My office is dysfunctional and I sort of like it because I can tweet about it.
12. ZZZ: Sends tweets like “I’m on my 2nd cup of coffee” or “heading home”.

I follow some of each of these kinds of Twitterers (I bet we all do). I tried to put myself in one of these categories, but I can’t. I tend to tweet across many of these categories.

For example, I definitely pimp out my blog on Twitter. A few times a week I tweet with a link to a new blog post. But I almost always feel bad about it. So those times I’m a #5. And I often find myself posting about how I need coffee or dinner or something, certainly boring everyone who follows me. Then I’m a #12. Other times I’m a #8 or a #10.  Seeing these categories spelled out this way almost makes me want to be a bit more interesting with my tweets.

I bet most Twitterers find themselves in many of these categories throughout the day. Someone needs to do a full-on content analysis and see what categories we’re missing.

PS - Just in case you’ve missed it, I’m spending most of my time this summer blogging for Appozite over on Appozitegeist. Check it out if you haven’t yet!

Last Modified : July 15th, 2008 Filed under : technology Navigate : Previous post / Next post