Rise up, my Twitter followers

I’ve always found the notion of Twitter followers to be a little odd.
I can understand why celebrities, politicians and other public figures would have followers on Twitter. People want to hear what they have to say: their opinions, witticisms and asides.
But not little old me.
Sure, I’m a technology business journalist at a national newspaper, but I have a separate Twitter account for work (See @IBD_PSeitz).
My personal Twitter account (@PatrickSeitz) is basically me just retweeting tech and pop culture articles that I find interesting. I’ll occasionally make a comment about something in the news or about a TV show I like. But that’s about it.
The other day I passed 800 followers on Twitter. Some cult leaders don’t have that many followers.
I’ve got a few ideas about who a lot of my followers are.

1. Spammers and scammers

A lot of shady businesses lurk around Twitter trying to entice users to click on their weblinks. Sometimes they’ll mention your Twitter name in a tweet that shows up in your Notifications. Other times they’ll follow you, hoping you’ll check out their profile to learn more about them.
A review of my Twitter Faker Score on Status People shows that 52% of my followers are “good” active users. But 9% of my followers are “fake” and 39% are “inactive.”
In January 2014, Status People reported that 76% of my followers were “good,” 8% fakers and 16% inactive. A big chunk of my followers went inactive on Twitter in a little over a year.
Meanwhile, Twitter Audit says 86% of my followers are “real.”
I would tend to believe Status People in this regard.

2. People hoping for a reciprocal follow

I have colleagues with many more Twitter followers than me, but they also follow hundreds of Twitter accounts.
There seems to be an unspoken etiquette on Twitter that if someone follows you, you should follow them back. That’s fine for casual Twitter users, but not for people like me who actively use Twitter as a news feed.
This behavior likely started with Facebook where people try to accumulate as many Facebook friends as possible to boost their image.

3. People mistaking me for anime voice actor Patrick Seitz

If you do a Google search for Patrick Seitz, the top results are for voice actor Patrick Seitz of Los Angeles.
He has many fans who occasionally mistake my Twitter account for his. For the record, his Twitter handle is @Seitz_Unseen.
What’s worse is that he isn’t even a true Googleganger. His full name is David Patrick Seitz, according to his Wikipedia page.
There can be only one!

Photos: Twitter headquarters in San Francisco at night; voice-over artist Patrick Seitz.

Adults could follow teens in abandoning Facebook

It’s not hard for me to imagine Facebook going the way of MySpace. The social network is a mess and becoming less relevant to users by the day in my estimation.
A controversial study by researchers at Princeton University predicted recently that Facebook could lose 80% of its users by 2017. The study was debunked by Facebook data scientists and others for its use of Google search data to predict engagement trends rather than studying actual engagement trends. Facebook called the study “utter nonsense,” according to TechCrunch.
The study got a lot of coverage in the U.S. because it played into what a lot of people already feel about the massive social network.
People are expressing a lot of frustration with Facebook as it ramps up advertising and constantly tweaks its News Feed algorithms, changing what information is presented to users.
Facebook faces competition from mobile apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat and other networks like Twitter and Google+.
Facebook may be healthy today, with 728 million daily active users and 1.19 billion monthly active users as of Sept. 30, but online audiences can be fickle.
Articles have been trickling out about discontent among Facebook users.
First, reports started showing young people abandoning Facebook. A European study said Facebook “is dead and buried” to older teenagers, who prefer Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.
A study by iStrategyLabs earlier this month said Facebook has lost 59% of its college users and 25% of its teenage users in the last three years, IBD reported.
Freelance analyst Benedict Evans says Facebook’s core product, News Feed, is “broken” and has “collapsed under its own weight.”
Too many items clutter people’s news feeds and users can’t read it all and have a difficult time finding things that are relevant to their lives, he said, according to Business Insider.
Facebook is overstuffed with news articles, videos, photos, Internet memes, status updates, games and, increasingly, advertisements. It suffers from featuritis or feature creep. It does everything, but does nothing well.
At worst, Facebook will become like Yahoo, with billions of users, but no one really thinks about it much, Evans said.
In a video, science blogger Derek Muller slammed Facebook for the changes it’s making to the algorithms on its News Feed.
“The problem with Facebook is that it’s keeping things from you,” Muller said. “You don’t see most of what’s posted by your friends or the pages you follow.”
Facebook is now treating content providers like advertisers, trying to get them to pay for better placement in users’ news feeds, Business Insider reported.
Personally, I’ve never been a big Facebook user.
First, I used it mainly as a bookmarking service for interesting articles, because its ubiquitous like and share buttons made that easy. But finding those articles on Facebook now is quite difficult.
Later, for grins, I used Facebook to communicate with dozens of Googlegangers around the world. But friending other men named Patrick Seitz lost its appeal and I eventually unfriended them all.
I also used Facebook to connect with a childhood friend, which was nice. But there are multiple ways to do that now, such as through Twitter, LinkedIn, About.me and other services.
I still keep two Facebook accounts (one personal and one for work), but I don’t visit them very often. The big question is: Are other people feeling the same way?

Photo: Screenshot of my Facebook page with my Googlegangers.

The most beautiful women in the world, according to Patrick Seitzes

I recently conducted an unscientific survey of men named Patrick Seitz to see if we could agree on who is the most beautiful woman in the world.
The results were inconclusive. While we have great taste in women, we couldn’t agree on what constitutes ultimate beauty.

Q: Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?

Choices listed alphabetically

Christina Aguilera (See Wikipedia and Maxim.)

Jessica Alba (See Wikipedia, Maxim and Esquire.)

Kelly Brook (See Wikipedia and Maxim.)

Fergie (See Wikipedia.)

Bryce Dallas Howard (See Wikipedia and Maxim.)

Eva Mendes (See Wikipedia, Maxim and Esquire.)

Marisa Miller (See Wikipedia and Maxim.)

Natalie Portman (See Wikipedia and Maxim.)

Sharon Stone (See Wikipedia and Esquire.)

Photo: The lovely Kelly Brook

My ‘Googlegangers’ are a cool, diverse bunch

Anyone who’s ever Googled their name has come across their “Googlegangers.” They’re people you don’t know who share the same name as you.
They may not be evil twins, or doppelgangers, but they certainly detract from your uniqueness.
I’m friends with 29 Patrick Seitzes on Facebook, which counts 53 Patrick Seitzes among its members (although a few of those are duplicate accounts). LinkedIn has 10 Patrick Seitzes.
Judging from photos and interests of my Patrick Seitz friends on Facebook, we’re a pretty cool bunch of guys. Many are interested in manly sports like motorcycle racing, downhill skiing and rifle shooting and have enthusiasm for sports cars, hot women and good beer.
I thought it would be fun to survey all the Patrick Seitzes I could find to see if we have much in common.
I composed a survey using Survey Monkey and e-mailed it to more than 50 Patrick Seitzes worldwide about a week ago. Unfortunately just seven responded. I guess we Patrick Seitzes are a pretty private bunch or don’t like surveys. I thought the survey questions were pretty innocuous, but oh well.
Here are the results:

Birth place and current residence

Two Patrick Seitzes are from the German homeland – one from Bavaria and the other from the state of Baden-Württemberg, both in southern Germany – and currently live there.
Another Patrick Seitz was born in Switzerland, but currently lives in the U.S.
The other four Patrick Seitzes are from the U.S. and currently live in California, Connecticut and Minnesota.

Ancestry

With an Irish first name and German last name, I figured most respondents would be 50-50 Irish-German like me.
Two out of seven are and another said he is Irish, German, French Canadian and Ojibwe (or Chippewa) Native American.
Of the rest, two said they are 100% German; one is 100% Swiss; and one is 50% German and 50% Hispanic.

Religious affiliation

Three were raised Catholic, but only one still practices the religion. Two are Protestant. One is an atheist and another reports no religion. That means that just three out of seven currently have a religious affiliation.

Profession

Three Patrick Seitzes are engineers. The rest identify themselves as small business owner, human resources worker, journalist and voiceover actor.

Hobbies

Movies and cars are the most popular hobbies for men named Patrick Seitz, according to my unscientific survey. Four respondents listed movies among their hobbies and three said cars.
Two Patrick Seitzes identified “partying” as a hobby. Two listed video games.
Three listed sports as pastimes. One said, “Golfing, fishing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hockey and too many more.”

Favorite food and drink

Red meat and Italian food are clear favorites among men named Patrick Seitz.
Asked to name their favorite food, two said simply “steak” and one wrote “really well cooked Filet mignon. (med-rare, truffle butter).”
Pizza, pasta and “Italian” were responses from the four others.
When it comes to favorite beverages, three are cola drinkers (“Pepsi,” “Coca-Cola” and “Diet Coke with Lime.”), two prefer beer and one each for wine and “vodka, soda, lemon.”

Up next: Do men named Patrick Seitz have a standard ideal for beauty? Find out as I ask them to pick the most beautiful woman in the world.

Photos: Pictures of Patrick Seitzes in action worldwide. Source: Facebook.

Friending Googlegangers on Facebook

In July, I wrote about how I had “0 friends” on Facebook and planned on keeping it that way.
Well, I’ve changed my mind.
Now I only want to friend people who share my name. There are more than 50 men named Patrick Seitz on Facebook. We’re brothers in name and heritage.
Some day we might have to battle to the death “Highlander”-style, because “there can be only one.” But the time of the Quickening may never come. So relax, everybody, and put away your broadswords.
People who share your name on the Internet are called Googlegangers, which is a play on Google and doppelgänger. In fiction, doppelgangers are evil lookalikes.
I hope none of these Googlegangers are my evil twins. At least none of them look like me, that I’ve seen so far.
Tonight I’ve sent friend request to 53 men named Patrick Seitz on Facebook.
Let’s see what happens.

Update: I eventually became Facebook friends with about 35 Patrick Seitzes. But ultimately I got bored with the project and unfriended them.