BlackTwitters.com is like WeFollow…Sorta

There have been lots of Twitter applications popping up lately that focus on Blacks on Twitter and offering an easier way to follow them.  As of yet I haven’t really seen anything that integrates with the API, most are just directories that you add yourself to manually (correct me if I’m wrong in the comments).  BlackTwitters.com however does integrate and is extremely similar to WeFollow with less of the bells and whistles.  It started as an experimental project by Duane Washington (@DuaneWashington) and launched this past Monday. In an email he explains why he decided to start the project:

I created this site because I was tired of seeing lists of African American twitterers to follow on blog posts and forums. I was hoping that someone would develop a directory so that we can identify the top folks to follow for a particular category. I decided to move forward with creating an on-line niche twitter directory targeted especially for the African American and urban twitterers. The site allows you to discover the top blacks on twitter, also known as the Who’s Who of Twitter. There are various groups of high profile and influential Blacks that one can find using the website. Users are ranked by their number of followers under each tag which help visitors to discover users that share their interests.

The premise is simple: anyone can tweet to @blacktwitters hash-tags that represent what categories they would like to be listed under. Blacktwitters sees these @replies and then organizes users based on those hash-tags. User also can click a link on the home page to add themselves to the directory.

Kudos to Duane for starting the project!

I think the idea of BlackTwitters is great but to be frank would love to see more than a who’s who of Black Celebs on Twitter.  I want to connect with “regular people” on Twitter or at a minimum and for entertainment purposes only, regular people who play celebrities on TV the web…I always get a kick out of them.  This desire to connect with “regular people” is especially true in terms of tags the site has like #Entrepreneur, many if not all are involved in the entertainment industry or are rappers.  I totally understand that if you don’t like it users have the power to change this and submit themselves…so I took my own advice and did so.  My experience was I did not end up instantly in the categories I tagged myself with, my guess is due to some moderation system in place.  In a world and an environment that moves so quickly BlackTwitters.om may have some catching up to do in that regard and allow submissions to post automatically and even perhaps allow user moderation of offensive accounts submitted.  There are also some real hurdles to overcome with the user experience, mostly small things like the number of “followers in a tag” can get a little confusing when it is referencing the number of entries in a category.  While the site just launched I am sure they are already working on improvements like the ability to follow someone from within the application, or at least they should be.  The real question though is if this site is really needed when sites like WeFollow have about 106k “Twitters” under the #Black tag?  Would you go to BlackTwitters.com to find people to follow in addition to WeFollow or would your primarily use one service over the other?