Kevin Littleton

I love Twitter and I love lists.

There are a lot of Tweeters out there and I can boil them down to 5 different types:

Celebrities

As days go on, more and more of the mainstream celebrities are joining Twitter. This doesn't always mean that they are trying to connect to fans in a real personal way. Some do but most don't. It's hard to believe that Ellen DeGeneres of @TheEllenShow actually tweets everyday or that @oprah actually cares what's going on on Twitter. Aside from the fact that most celebrities don't get personally involved in what they are Tweeting - they take Twitter to a dark place: spam. 

Spammers

These people are the worst. They try and sell you on products that only other Spammers would ever want. 

"Leave Twitter on autopilot and learn to make thousands a week"

"Click the link to learn how to make 100 dollars right now!"

Spammers are evil and they flood our DM boxes with their useless links and "hey, I love your tweets... buy this," nonsense. Of course spammers are everywhere and before I switched to Gmail (which I think you should too) I used to get a lot in my email. I feel those days are slightly over but I'm sure a lot will disagree with me there. 

The Average Joe

These Twitterers are the most refreshing of them all. They are always tweeting about what is really going on in their lives. A hit or miss in terms of substance but always an honest opinion on something and the tweets almost never come with links. They use the official Twitter website or their cell phones for most tweets. They probably don't retweet too much. 

The average Joe doesn't tweet that much and primarily use their time to check Facebook or Myspace, Twitter is an afterthought. 

The Power User

These people are the elite in terms of "everyday people". They quite possibly could be a celebrity on Twitter or on other social networking sites but they hold no weight when going to expensive restaurant. These Twitterers love their links and love their own links even more. They RT as much as possible in hopes that someone will RT their "oh, no big deal here's my latest blog post link". The power user is someone who either blogs, has a product, or just needs a lot of attention. 

They have lot's of goals in terms of where they want their status in a few years and they are usually always money minded. This doesn't mean they have no hearts - most of them do.

The Striving-to-be-Something Guy

Of course you can't be a power user overnight. The road to this level can be long and hard, maybe sometimes wet (because of rain, right?). Before internet fame is reached and you can call yourself a Twitter power user you first must be a "Striving-to-be-Something Guy". These people (and they're not always male) make it obvious that they are trying to get to a level that is above them, through whatever means is necessary. They RT like hell, try to find the most interesting links, try to blog worthy content, Tweet constantly, provide advice (not always spot on either), plug their friend's products and mass follow people. Of course this sounds like they are assholes but this is not always the case. Most of them have hearts and whether or not they keep it when they obtain the power user level is a question only you can decide.  

(Bonus section - who doesn't like 'em?)

Bots

Robots on Twitter can be both fun and annoying. There are quite a few of them out there and they differ from spammers in which they usually aren't trying to sell you something. These robots are usually looking for certain keywords like roast beef, pencils, clouds or Tony the Tiger and they will RT your tweet that included those. Of course at first when you see that RT you get all excited about it and wonder who did it, what they said and hope it drives traffic. Then you realize it's a bot and get all sad. 

All these different people make Twitter what it is today. I can't say that any are all that bad. Some can be annoying, yes, but lot's of things in life are annoying and you just have to suck it up. I didn't mean to bag too much on any of these groups because I like them all. Well maybe not the spammers, they do suck.

Of course nobody is quite cut and dry like this list is and I'm sure lot's of you can be described with a couple of these types. Which leads me to the question of:

What group(s) are you a part of?