Is there a Ghost on Twitter?

Pacman
Originally uploaded by Scorr HampsonOriginally uploaded by scott hampson.
Originally Uploaded by Scott Hampson.

It's been about two months since I first got on Twitter and I have mostly positive reviews of it. I have never learned so much from so many brilliant people who have passed on information via Twitter about my interests: business philanthropy, CSR, non-profits, volunteerism, entrepreneurism and others. Just this last month I have been able to experience via Twitter, from the comfort of my desk, four amazing conferences: Business As Agent Of World Benefit Forum, Craigslist Foundation Bootcamp, the International Positive Psychology Conference and the National Volunteer and Service Conference.

While I wish I had the opportunity to be physically present at the conferences, being on Twitter gave me live feedback from the participants there as well as the links to the livestream of the proceedings. I had the the opportunity to observe some of the presentations, workshops, and hear many speakers like Michelle Obama speak via livestream. I am so grateful and privileged to be able to get this much value from my virtual participation.

So what do ghosts have to do with this? I continue to be puzzled by this rush to have hundreds and thousand of followers who are trying to add me to their list and who have nothing to do with what I am interested in. Most of them that find me are not scary, a few of them are and I block them. But somewhere there is a ghost that is creeping in. All of the sudden I am seeing "thank you for following me" from people like "LooseFat" that I would have not agreed to follow. Of course I now have to take the time to "unfollow" all these unknown people.

I had not heard about these ghosts in Twitter before and I hope Twitter does something about them, so I can get back to doing learning and writing about what it is important to me, and participating in all these great conferences!