How Much is Enough?

In what has become to be known as the quintessential Wall Street film, aptly titled 'Wall Street', the legendary character Gordon Gekko responds to the question of how much money is enough by saying 'It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses.'

In the sequel to 'Wall Street', a main character, Jake, asks a similar question to the head of a major Wall Street bank. He poses the question – 'what is your number?' – referring to the idea that everyone on Wall St has an amount of money in their mind that would be 'enough'. The bank president responds 'more'.

I am learning to a greater extent each day that this sardonically quipped line by the character played by Josh Brolin, is quite befitting in the realm of social media as well.

How many friends, followers or connections are enough? It seems only 'more'.

I suppose this is not much of a revelation, as it is intuitively understood that we as beings are inherently dissatisfied with our position – or maybe that's just me?

We want the Mercedes-Benz until we get it and then need a Porsche, the Porsche then gives way to the Maserati – all the while our true desire just may be a bigger penis.

I have about 85 followers on Twitter currently. I would say at least 50 of these people could care less about what I have to tweet, but continue following me because I follow back. Yes, essentially my Twitter integrity is for sale and it goes for the price of a single follow.

It wasn't always this way. I swear. For a while I was only following those I felt were worthy of following. Those days are long gone.

I started to notice that by not following back, I was unable to grow my following – validating my belief that very few of my followers take note of my tweets, click links, or view me as anything more than a number on their stats board.

So why then am I so excited to get a new follower on Twitter? There is a real argument to be made that these followers harbor very little value in helping me to achieve my ultimate goal of engagement with my website. None the less, I am somehow pleased, even ecstatic when @ShopWomensProducts or @BuyUsedCars begins following me. Add a tally to my list. Now let's go for more.

When Zuckerberg and his Facebook Empire think 'more', they're thinking in terms of a greater percentage of the entire population of the world – why stop at 10%? For me, 'more' is a single digit game. I hope for 2 or 3 followers in a day, maybe 5 if I'm lucky. However, the notion of never being satisfied is universal – for big and small companies. The whole idea of the 'more' figure is that it is limitless.

In this limitless pursuit, moral boundaries can often times be blurred or bent. It is commonly known that twitter followers can be easily bought from a number of companies who advertise their services openly on the Twitter network itself. Should I feel cheated to find out a company or individual is buying its followers?

In financial parlance, this would definitely bring about questions of moral hazard. Moral hazard is defined by Investopedia as 'the risk that a party to a transaction has not entered into the contract in good faith, has provided misleading information about its assets, liabilities or credit capacity, or has an incentive to take unusual risks in a desperate attempt to earn a profit before the contract settles.'

In this light then, I should certainly feel cheated, having entered into a 'relationship' on twitter with a company that is not acting in good faith. I am not sure if a company buying followers is taking an unusual risk in an attempt to earn a profit, but they are certainly involved in a desperate attempt of some sort.

That's all for not though and whatever other companies are doing has very little bearing on my own twitter success or lack there of.

In theory, I should find solace in the humility of a tweet well done; in sharing content that has a hint of value draped between the hash tags and '@' signs. I should understand that I am neither winning nor losing the Twitter race.

In reality though, like the most of us, I am numbers watcher who is always hoping for more. So if you take one thing from this rant, please know – I follow back. @updates_shmish

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