This is disappointing, as most of Twitter’s value is not tied up in following celebrities. I suspect that many users sign up for the first time, follow mostly celebrities and then give up, since they never get much interaction.
Agreed.
What I'd like to see is for Twitter to do much more curation: select top users in very focused categories (for instance, "Technology Journalists", "Linux Experts", "Java Experts" and let users drill down through multiple categories to select the people they want to follow.
Twitter already has something similar (it's step 2 in the sign up process) but the current categories are too overbroad and unfocused.
the current categories are too overbroad and unfocused.
OK. Then how do they narrow it down? Remember that they're not targeting any one narrow demographic, and don't necessarily have any demographic data on a brand new user.
Agreed. What I'd like to see is for Twitter to do much more curation: select top users in very focused categories (for instance, "Technology Journalists", "Linux Experts", "Java Experts" and let users drill down through multiple categories to select the people they want to follow. Twitter already has something similar (it's step 2 in the sign up process) but the current categories are too overbroad and unfocused.