On being massively retweeted

On Saturday, I tweeted on this crazy news item about RIM executives:

RIM execs “chewed through restraints”?! Just how drunk do you have to be for that? cbc.ca/news/canada/to… @gruber

And I CCed John Gruber of Apple and tech blogging fame. I’ve been reading John’s stuff for years, since before he was all famous. I thought he’d like my tweet. He did: he quickly retweeted it to his 1750,000+ followers.

I’ve never been retweeted like that. In fact, my words have definitely never been put in front of that many eyeballs ever before in any context. Wow. I wasn’t sure what would happen. It seemed like kind of a big deal.

Would I get hundreds of new followers? Would I be deluged with mentions? What does a retweet to that many people get you?

Answer: not much beyond a little thrill.

About a dozen mentions. Over the next day, people replied to @gruber and me with assorted witticism, several of which were just as amusing or more, and several on the general theme that this sort of thing is pretty normal for Canadians. And that was that. No big deal. I didn’t have any great hopes or expectations from it or anything — I was just genuinely curious about what would happen, if anything.

That is all.

P.S. On the RIM thing: in vino veritas! RIM execs drink like they manage tech?