On Soulja Boy and the meaning of Twitter

I wish I could understand Soulja Boy's lyrics, so I could alter them to make a clever intro to this post. Instead, I'll have to go with the straight news:

Soulja Boy has 2.5 million Twitter followers, but his new album sold a craptastic 13,000 copies in its first week.

Billboard's brief analysis of this utter failure asks several questions: Are Twitter follower stats meaningless? Did Soulja Boy use Twitter the wrong way? Is Twitter just a place where everyone talks and nobody listens?

The answers to those questions aren't that important (but they're "no," "no" and "no," if you care). The real question is, "What are you looking to get out of Twitter?" If your answer is "a ton of sales" or "a ton of money" or even "a ton page views," you're up Twit Creek without a paddle. (See what I did there?)

Anytime you can get 2.5 million people's attention, it's not meaningless. Soulja Boy uses Twitter to share his thoughts, interact with fans and promote his music. That's a great way to deepen your bond with your hardcore audience.

But using Twitter isn't going to get you a bigger audience. Everyone who has a huge Twitter following was already famous for something else. People didn't start following Soulja Boy on Twitter because of his 140-character witticisms. They started following him because he sang that annoying "Superman" song with that ridiculous dance a few years ago.

His last album included that hit. This new album doesn't have a hit like that. That's why the new album's sales were less than a third of the last one's. It wasn't a failing of Soulja Boy as a Twitter user or even of Soulja Boy as a marketer. It was a failing of Soulja Boy as an artist.

My Twitter account at work has more than 1,200 followers. If I promote a story, I'm happy to get a handful of re-tweets and a couple dozen page views in return. It really doesn't affect the overall success or failure of a story.

It's easy to look at those numbers and say, "Wow, Twitter sucks," but I know that's not what Twitter's for. Other users, like Soulja Boy, have to learn that lesson the hard way.