My initial reaction to that was to ask the following question to the Twittersphere:

The responses came in thick and fast and they opened up a great stream of conversation for the next hour at least, with aspects to all sides of the original question.

David Spinks and Alex Tan opened up a great conversation around the question which you can read more of here.

From my own point of view, when I asked the question I was of the mindset that it leaned more toward ego as opposed to pride (or excitement at receiving praise). Did you really need to retweet the praise – couldn’t you just say thanks to the person who offered the praise?

But is that view right? Is it any different from having a testimonial page on a website, or asking for references for your LinkedIn account? Does the public conversation aspect of Twitter make it less “respectable” to promote your praise than a static site?

Someone mentioned that it’s like being at a cocktail party – you wouldn’t suddenly announce how great you are. Or would you?

So… is it ego, or is it pride? Is it being genuinely pleased or just being a pimp? Would you retweet praise verbatim about you? Over to you – the mic is yours.

The Ego Has Landed (Or Has It?) originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.