Twitter adds nonprofit people as suggested users
Howard Lake | 10 November 2009 | Blogs
Twitter has for some time offered a list of celebrities, journalists, bloggers, sportspeople, politicians, company leaders and other significant users of the service in a list of ‘suggested users’.
This list was designed to help new users find interesting people and to start following them and receiving their messages.
However, charity staff and leaders, and those involved in philanthropy did not get a look-in. Presumably Twitter’s staff did not think them as worthy of interest.
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That has now changed, and a number of nonprofit sector people that use Twitter are now listed.
‘Suggested users’ from the nonprofit world now include Matt Flannery, co-founder/CEO kiva.org; Kjerstin Erickson of social entrepreneurship nonprofit FORGE; Bruce Lowry, communications director of the Skoll Foundation; successful social media users charity: water; and the Acumen Fund.
The value of being listed on this list is clear. It can rapidly increase the number of followers, often by tens of thousands each. Indeed, it took Matt Flannery of Kiva by surprise; he wondered if his account was being spammed as he watched the number of followers grow rapidly. He currently has 130,396 followers.
Similarly, Kari Saratovsky, VP Social Innovation @CaseFoundation & evangelist for all things social media 4 social good currently has 134,912 followers; Bruce Lowry at the Skoll Foundation has 131,519 followers; and Kjerstin Ericson at FORGE has 134,045.
That this many people choose to receive regular messages about philanthropy is encouraging and means that nonprofit sector updates are a part of many people’s daily lives. The value of Twitter as a tool to spread information about the nonprofit sector is clearly growing.
Let’s hope that by following these nonprofit sector people, many other Twitter users start to learn more about the sector.
http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.