I find this one-way broadcast from leader to follower usage of twitter to be kind of... evil.
I'll just single out one bit that I find truly annoying:
* Cause my followers to smile with something funny
* Inspire my followers (for example, with an inspirational quote)
* Enrich my followers' perspectives (such as with a link to an interesting article)
It's all one way. Leader-follower. Not one thing on there is actually him learning from someone else, except for the (presumably always positive) feedback from his followers.
Every link to twitter on there is his tweets. The closest we get to things actually going the other way is a picture of a guy with a cat on his head.
Your observation is correct, although I can tell you that Tony does interact back with people.
I made a comment once that Zappos should add Kangol hats to their merchandise. I really sent it more in the ether than to him directly, but he direct-messaged me back saying they would look into it.
Another time I was at a tradeshow and saw an interesting RFID inventory solution. I direct-messaged Tony to tell him about it, and I got a thanks reply back shortly after.
I think he's paying attention to and listening to what others are saying. I took the tone of his article to be more positive, and I do believe that he has far more followers than "followees", which is not abnormal for Twitter pseudo-celebrities.
But maybe that's why twitter is so successful?
It gives people, even those who can't coherently express themselves in more than 140 letters, a little soapbox with an 1-dimensional, positive-only return channel ("number of followers").
Maybe that's also why it took our social media experts and key influencers so long to realize that everybody else can not only open their own soapbox but also relate it to yours - which suddenly turns your little megaphone into a podium discussion. Oops!
That would be awful, though. To always be considering every move you make and everything you say because it may offend someone. Just the fact that I have a business requires me to censor myself, which I hate. That's absolutely nothing compared to being on camera 24/7.
I suppose if I was always on camera I'd kill myself because it would be a life with far too much compromise.
I'll just single out one bit that I find truly annoying:
It's all one way. Leader-follower. Not one thing on there is actually him learning from someone else, except for the (presumably always positive) feedback from his followers.Every link to twitter on there is his tweets. The closest we get to things actually going the other way is a picture of a guy with a cat on his head.