FEBRUARY 15TH, 2022

Upon first entering the NFT space on Twitter, it can be overwhelming. There’s a plethora of individuals, some with multiple accounts, trying to be seen and heard. These people come from all over the globe in hopes of finding collectors, connections, friends, and tips on investing or cryptocurrencies. The more an individual invests into the scene, the wider the vision extends - showing the newcomers a true vision of what community can or could be.

Naturally, since people are multifaceted, groups do not always stay together or remain a positive, safe place. As artists interact with each other, groups can start to form and blossom into friendships - and, occasionally, rivalries and disagreements. Sometimes, groups remain neutral and are used as a tool rather than socializing. Overall, groups and direct messages (DMs) on Twitter will continue as part of a strong networking ability utilized by promoters and known, unknown, or upcoming artists in the NFT community.

When it comes to the function of groups on Twitter, there’s typically a leader that brings the group together. This leader has special permissions such as naming the group, choosing the group’s image and choosing who can stay in the group (since there is an option to remove people from the group chat).

The individuals in these groups work together to help push each other’s work through retweets (RTs), create visibility through comments on posts, provide feedback on pieces that are a work in progress (WIPs), and serve as a general space to talk to one another privately (not on the timeline).

If an artist is interested in making their own direct message group on Twitter, first they must identify the individuals they will be inviting into the DM. It might seem like an easy task, but the group leader needs to consider personalities to ensure that the group flows smoothly (and to ensure everyone gets along). Second, it might also be regarded as wise to reflect on the art styles of the individuals in the group. For example, if there are collectors invested in macabre art, if the group is mainly pushing macabre art, these artists could be picked up by any one of the group’s collectors. However, another approach could be to add artists that contribute many different styles, exposing the members to various mediums (digital art, music, painting, poetry, and so on). Third, the group leader should be ready to adjust to the chat if it becomes too out of control. An example of this would be when a group interacts and chats a lot, and links get hidden. Another example could be the unfortunate discovery of someone in the group plagiarizing.

Another aspect to group DMs would be ‘promotion farmers’ that gather individuals into group chats to push their promoted tweets. These promotion/engagement farmers are typically getting paid by artists to promote. These accounts have multiple groups going to push smaller artists into sharing their paid/promoted content with incentives. Promotion farming groups function as other groups typically would, except the engagement farmer (which usually has 10k followers or more) will provide random opportunities (dynamics) for the group to participate in and earn a chance at a RT or follow from them.

According to NFT Twitter, the average group size is 30 to 50 individuals. When there is a high amount of chatting and linking, sometimes the leader will opt to move to Discord, an online community/chat platform. This is because some users feel overwhelmed with many chat messages and links being thrown into one window (in their direct message box). An interesting aspect of the groups formed on Twitter is that sometimes these groups of people will overlap. Artists, promoters, and collectors can generally tell what groups go together by the people they often interact with or retweet/tag in art threads.

Overall, direct messages on Twitter are a powerful networking tool utilized by many in the space. It can help artists branch out to make friends, and it can help connect artists to opportunities they previously would not have encountered otherwise.