Music, tweet music.
Shamara is, according to the website Twitaholic.com, the 19th-biggest Twitter user in the Philadelphia region, with more than 7,500 followers. Since joining Twitter 17 months ago, she has sent out an astounding 44,668 tweets, about 85 a day.
Like many users of Twitter, and like all of Philly's biggest tweeters, Shamara uses Twitter for three purposes, which melt into one another:
Promoting themselves.
Making friends, one by one.
Building communities of people who come together over shared interests.
Shamara and other huge tweeters show how, in the social-media world of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, the private is increasingly merging with the public.
It's estimated that more than 100 million people worldwide use Twitter, sending out text messages of 140 characters or fewer. Popular as a personal means of staying in touch, tweeting has also taken off in business and entertainment.
Twitter figures are rough. When users create a Twitter account, they can fill in their location - but they don't have to, and they don't have to tell the truth. Websites such as twitter.grader.com and Twitaholic count those who enter Philadelphia and track how busy they are.
Philadelphia tweets more than cities many times its size. The world's 53d-most-populous city, Philly is 24th in Twitter traffic, according to twitter.grader.com. It ranks ahead of Mumbai and Tehran and just behind Bangalore.
The top tweeters
So who are Philadelphia's top tweeters? In terms of followers, according to Twitaholic, the city's Twitter king is Ahmir Thompson, better known as ?uestlove, drummer for the Roots, the popular hip-hop band and house band for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. ?uestlove has a remarkable 1,341,925 followers.
