Perhaps unfair to comment before reading the long version, but I’ll respond just to the labels you’ve chosen and the way you’re operationalizing those. I think the categories themselves make sense, not the measures, and I’m fiddling linguistically with the labels you’ve chosen.

I don’t see @ replies as the sole province of Salesmen. Yes, they’re clearly selling when it’s a spammy autoreply with a “click my junk” link (which may also be hidden in the DMs, so you won’t be able to see those as an indicator of Salesman status).

The @ messages are also a means of conversation, so those people may just be chatty, or seeking a more direct one-to-one connection.

If I see a profile page that has all broadcast messages and no @ messages, it feels to me as if that person is always talking through a megaphone and never listening or conversing, and I’m less likely to follow.

I sometimes use @ messages to act as a Connector. The RT is a very squishy measure of connecting; it may be more a measure of impressions (in the sense of ad measurements) than connecting.

If I tweet someone directly to point out a blog post I think will be interesting, I’m connecting–and I’m perhaps a bit of a Maven too, but it’s not MY stuff I’m touting.

Saying that tweeting one’s own blogs makes for a Maven–for me, that’s sometimes true, but sometimes it feels a lot more like being approached by a Salesman.

It depends on the frequency of those tweets in the overall stream, how it’s couched, and whether the person also shares the work of others generously. I tweet links to my own occasional blog posts, but my writing is fairly personal and not full of expertise, which is something I associate with the term Maven.

Not easy to get a handle on either the labels or what to measure in Twitter, that’s clear. Now I’ll go read the original post & see if I’m all wet .

@BarbChamberlain

Barb,

Excellent points. As I weave through the comments on the various posts, it seems that most people see their activity spreading across of the three roles – and trying to come up with a way to identify the “primary” activity is difficult. Will take some work…

One other thing I’ve noted is people have a very, very bad reaction to the “salesman” label. I have a hunch that if I use the one-word description for it on Wikipedia – “persuaders” – the resistance would drop substantially.