While we’ve often come at the intersection of law and technology from different directions, making the potential for a massive crash quite strong, I’ve always had great respect for Kevin O’Keefe, proprietor of Lexblog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs and, of course Lextweet.  While he’s always been a vigorous proponent of technology, he’s never wrapped it up in a bow of baloney, It’s always been the delivery system for meaningful work rather than a magic bullet in lieu of it.  I respect that.

Yet as an early adapter of Twitter, which produced Lextweet, a twitter feed of lawyers and lawyer-type folks apart from the rest of the twitterverse, he put some relatively unattractive photos of people on the right sidebar and called them “Top community members on Twitter.”  That’s where I first learned that Rex7, an unemployed law student, had collected more twitter followers than anyone else (over 71k at the moment).  

In the past, I’ve had some fun challenging the notion that collecting followers on twitter was a meaningful or worthwhile endeavor.  But was I missing something?  Perhaps there’s a prize for having more followers than the next guy, or promoting oneself despite the ready appearance of buffoonery?  After all, if Kevin thought it worthy to put pics and numbers of these twitter superstars on his sidebar, who was I to doubt that this meant something important?

This time, apparently, I got it right and Kevin, after a while, got to the intersection a bit later than me.  Fiery crash avoided.

As wonderful, or at least enjoyable, as many find technology, the knee-jerk reaction to new opportunities seems to be to establish oneself as dominant through the most obvious means.  In the case of twitter, it’s number of followers. In a rational sense, this metric would be more of failure than success, since as Kevin notes, the things one does to accumulate followers are rather ugly and counterproductive. 

There’s a tipping point between being followed by people you know, you like, you care about and who care about you, and the scam factor of mere numbers.  It’s got its analogies in every new medium, and can invariably be ascertained by the growth of slimebags selling magic ways to achieve greatness without really trying.

The irony here, of course, is that Kevin, in his early zeal to promote twitter, which he saw as one of the greatest advancements in technology after the blog, was one of the foremost promoters of big numbers by his inclusion of the most-followed twitterers in his sidebar.  It was a mistake in the first place, and he now realizes that it led lawyers down the wrong path.

Quantity may have been the quick and easy way to judge in the early days, but it’s false god. 

As with blogging, or pretty much anything else in life worth doing, quality will always bear out in the end.  I was resistant to twitter in the beginning, thinking it another fool’s game for people whose thoughts never exceeded 140 characters.  I was wrong.  I’ve learned that it has its place and, frankly, has become a regular mode of communication for many, including myself. 

But even with my modest 600+ followers, there are a bunch who are totally worthless, following me for the follow back (ain’t happening), to sell me something (ain’t happening), or to entice me to view their dorm cam (really ain’t happening).  I’ve given up trying to delete them as they tend to go away on their own when they find out that they’ve followed someone who is worthless to their purposes.  As I noted a while back,

Give me 10 followers with whom I actually want to interact and I’ll trade you 10,000 spammers. 

It’s important that Kevin has come on board, because he carries far more sway in matters of technology than I ever will.  My concern is that the techno-grab that has been embraced by so many lawyers as the magic bullet to solve their business deficits has done grievous harm by undermined the few vestiges of honor, integrity and client service that remain in a once-vaunted profession.  By taking on those who have spent their time collecting worthless followers, and thereby trying to slay a monster than he was integral in creating in his own self-interest, Kevin has made as strong a statement as he can.  The day of dumb quantity is over. It’s time to grow up.

Quality trumps quantity.  Kevin O’Keefe says so.  Now if he would only remove those pics from his sidebar.