Hey MSM any old Twit(erer) understands what Rep Weiner's numbers mean

I came to twit­ter very late in the game, so unlike many blog­gers both big­ger and smaller than me, my total num­ber of fol­low­ers is very small (787 as of this morn­ing). To give you an idea of how that stands with some­one of some celebrity; Joe Scar­bor­ough of MSNBC who I write about a bit has over 100,000 fol­low­ers (100,935 to be exact as of this morning).

As a per­son rel­a­tively new to media I remem­ber the first time a major paper started fol­low­ing me (NY Post) it was a big deal.

On May 27^th I picked up Kath­eryn Jean Lopez of National Review as a fol­lower and yes­ter­day I picked up blog­ger and radio host Dana Loesch. I met Dana and her hus­band at CPAC I’ve never met Kathryn but I was extremely pleased to have them both fol­low me since it will allow me to con­tact them pri­vately about appear­ing on my radio show DaT­e­chGuy on DaRa­dio (AM 830 WCRN Worcester).

I also only fol­low 323 peo­ple as a rule I try to fol­low about half the num­ber of peo­ple who fol­low me. That gen­er­ates a plenty big twit­ter stream. I sim­ply can’t see how peo­ple keep up with fol­low­ing thou­sands of peo­ple. To con­tinue the above exam­ple; Joe Scar­bor­ough only fol­lows 394 peo­ple. Keep that num­ber in mind as it is important.

Now com­pared to Joe Scar­bor­ough I’m a per­son of very lit­tle celebrity. I’ve been blog­ging for maybe 2 1/​2 years with a total of a bit over 550k hits over­all between the old and the cur­rent blog. I’ve have had a radio show on a 50,000 Watt Sta­tion heard in 6 states for about 6 months. In Fitch­burg Mass. that a big deal, in Worces­ter county it mat­ters. In DC or NY that means very little.

By com­par­i­son Joe Scar­bor­ough served in con­gress, has a Morn­ing Show on MSNBC that is watched by an awful lot of peo­ple. Writes a weekly com­men­tary and is known by movers and shak­ers all over the country.

Why is this impor­tant? Well I just “fol­lowed” Beu­lah Gar­rett @beulahgg who men­tioned me in a tweet a few hours ago. She will likely notice that I did so, she may or may not look at my pro­file and may or may not be impressed; as a great-​grandmother she has likely seen enough that it takes more than me to impress her.

Now Let’s say Joe Scar­bor­ough choose to fol­low Ms. Gar­rett. Joe has over 100k fol­low­ers, if he choose to fol­low Ms.Garrett I sus­pect she would take a lot more notice and might even be impressed.

What does Joe Scar­bor­ough and who fol­lows or doesn’t fol­low me or Ms. Gar­rett have to do with Con­gress­man Anthony Weiner of NY 9^th dis­trict and his claim that some­one hacked his twit­ter and photo accounts to send a photo of an erect penis in under­wear to a young lady? Everything!

Con­gress­man Weiner’s dis­trict is in NY. He is a man of some national promi­nence, a lib­eral who is not afraid of tak­ing on con­ser­v­a­tives directly. The phone mes­sage at his national office is per­son­able and friendly. He is a reg­u­lar guest on Morn­ing Joe and is not shy about appear­ing any­where. His national promi­nence dwarfs mine of course.

As of this moment 10:03 a.m. EST he has over 45K fol­low­ers (45737 to be exact) I’m not one of them. He also fol­lows only 194 people.

Until 48 hours ago one of those peo­ple was Genette Nicole Cor­dova tweet­name @Gennette Noble the young lady who is at the cen­ter of this inter­est­ing event.

Just to remind you. Gen­nette Noble Gen­nette Nicole Cor­dova is a 21-​year-​old col­lege stu­dent in Seat­tle Wash­ing­ton. She writes for the col­lege news­pa­per. She seems a fairly attrac­tive young girl and until 24 hours ago I knew absolutely noth­ing about her. I doubt many peo­ple on the net did. It would be fair to say that her promi­nence com­pared to me is of the same pro­por­tion of my promi­nence com­pared to Joe Scarborough.

Yet until 48 hours ago she was one of the under 200 peo­ple Con­gress­man Wiener fol­lowed on Twit­ter.

Run that through your head for a second.

In the last 24 hours her face­book account has dis­ap­peared. Her twit­ter account have dis­ap­peared. Her byline has dis­ap­peared from col­lege papers. This shows some­one is tak­ing great pains to remove her from the net.

If one wants to believe the congressman’s story one can say she is just try­ing to avoid fur­ther unwanted pub­lic­ity. One might be able to ratio­nal­ize that.

One can’t ratio­nal­ize the fact that until all of this came out, a New York Con­gress­man of some national promi­nence was fol­low­ing her on twit­ter. I’m 48 years old and was impressed by being fol­lowed by Dana Loesch and Kathryn Lopez tell me how impressed a 20 some­thing year old col­lege girl would be by being fol­lowed by a con­gress­man 3000 miles away?

Any per­son who uses twit­ter under­stands with this means. They also know two other things:

1. If two peo­ple fol­low each other on twit­ter they can send pri­vate mes­sages unseen by others

2..The dif­fer­ence between a pri­vate mes­sage and a pub­lic one is two characters

@rsmccain This mes­sage is public

d rsm­c­cain this mes­sage is private

The dif­fer­ence is a “@” sign and the let­ter “d”

This is why the MSM is des­per­ate to kill this quickly, that is why the left side of the sphere will be cry­ing Andrew Bre­it­bart till their voices grow horse hoarse, it’s also why this scan­dal will not be able to be con­tained by the left.

Joe Scar­bor­ough knows twit­ter, he also knows Andrew Weiner, if he chooses to look at the fol­lower num­bers he will know what it means. That bad for Anthony Weiner, the left and the MSM.

What’s worse for them? There are mil­lions of peo­ple who use twit­ter who have absolutely no inter­est in pol­i­tics, who when they see the num­bers con­cern­ing fol­low­ers also will under­stand exactly what it means.

The left and Rep Weiner have one long week­end to decide how they are going to han­dle this. I don’t envy them. They might be able to per­suade the media to leave it alone but the mean­ing and details of this scan­dal can be under­stood by mil­lions of peo­ple in 140 char­ac­ters or less.

Update: Two quick things, Ace of Spades notes that at the time this broke Rep Weiner only fol­lowed 91 peo­ple, not the just under 200 peo­ple he fol­lows now and asks.

What could pos­si­bly cause a big macher Con­gress­man decide to fol­low a kid in college?

The photo at the link con­tains both reasons.

Sec­ondly I am reminded of Robert Stacy McCain’s a reporter of National promi­nence who has cov­ered the pow­er­ful for years reac­tion when Alyssa Milano re-​tweeted him:

That’s how unusual it is for a nation­ally known reporter to re-​tweeted by Alyssa Milano (and he worked hard for that re-​tweet ‚) how much less likely is it for a col­lege stu­dent on a school paper to be fol­lowed by a con­gress­man in NY?

Update 2: Insta­lanche! The per­fect thing way to end a blog’s month, thanks Glenn. Hey Pun­dit read­ers you will want to check out yesterday’s radio show with news about a pos­si­ble gop pri­mary oppo­nent to Scott Brown & my thoughts on Palin. With come­dian Steven Crow­der sched­uled for next week I won­der if there is some­thing funny in the news we can talk about?

Update 3: Some­how missed a piece of her name, thanks to Jane­too for catch­ing it.