Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

I just reached 1, 069 followers on twitter today. One thousand and Sixty nine. Yes. 69. My favorite number. Even my last seasons Arsenal Jersey is number 69. And that’s what’s up!

After being on twitter for 8 months now, I can see the demarcations.

Ofcourse, I joined in April 2009, just to reserve the IddSalim name. Branding storoz.

When @Safaricom_Care invited what they called the ‘Top Bloggers in Kenya‘ last week to the ‘Safaricom Bloggers and GutterPress CockTail‘, there was a discussion on twirra about this. What makes one a top blogger in Kenya? Is it undeniable literary proficiency that captivates the audience? Is it talking about things that affect all of us in a mature subtle manner? Is it sticking to the truth and NEVER manipulating it to suit your cause? Or is it being discordant, peevish and querulous all the time.

My take was that someone in Safcom PR either did NOT know the big divide in the Kenyan  blogoshpere and hence invited everyone … Or knows the divide ohh, so, well and feared kutukanwa na gutter-press. Bado Hamjazoea kutukanwa?

So I called and DM’ed some buddies there and my question was : ‘Is this a bloggers cocktail or a gutter-press cocktail?’. I made it very clear that my time, morals and target audience does not allow me to mingle with people with literary malfeasance and irresponsible writing.

But on chat, a friend got online and started to ‘try to make me see the point’. ‘Salim, it is all about traffic and followers’, He said. ‘These guys might be gutter-press, but collectively 2 of them have over 10, 000 followers in twitter. That is not a mean feat’.

What? I beg your pardon? Twitter followers is a mark of being an eCeleb in Kenya? I saw someone rake in 3500 new followers in ONE NIGHT just by insulting a Minister in the Kenyan Government. Is that how low we have stooped? Anything for fame? Are the followers all lost sheep in search for a shepherd in any shape, size of IQ?

I will happily sleep at night with 200 twitter followers, a following consisting of top journalists, news anchors, CEOs, Managers, Coders and Hacker in Kenya, than 8, 000 watchmen, shoe-shiners and halfwits.

Wait… Traffic also matters? Well, yeah, I know it does. But do you consider things like IQ and purchasing power of the readers? You are what you read and eat. Read negative and hormonal complaints every morning, and you become negative and dull. Birds of a feather flock together. Also, Javascript and CSS hits are not really a show of traffic. I would challenge everyone who wants to talk about traffic to publish a public and real-time url for their site visitors like I have done.

I think, fundamentally, it is a question is respecting yourself and your time.

But then again, we can’t all be equally busy and focused. There are alot of cooks, watchmen and shoe-shiners who add up to twitter-followers and site readers. The “Watcha tukasome tuone leo ametukana nani. Last week ilikuwa Kahenya.” crew. Adding up to stats and ‘reach’.

You would be surprised how many people would participate in a “Chagua Mtu Tumtusi This week ukwachu Nangos” promotion where you send the name of a prominent person and he gets slandered on a blog for kicks.

Hence the question. Who do you subscribe to? How much is your 5 mins to read a blog post worth? Ama you are idle all day?

Back to code…

Wazi.