My thoughts on Twitter, 72 and a bit hours later
Some first impressions after my attempt to learn more about this popular platform.
My first is that I misunderstood how many people use it. It’s as much a networking tool as blogging one. Indeed, the way people use it seems to vary a lot. Within hours of “following” a small group of people who’s blogs & writings interest me I had received a number of reciprocal followers. I wonder if there is a measure of Twitter-ettiquete?
When I first joined Facebook, my sister chastised me for poor Facebook behavior “Oh Neil, you never write on your OWN wall”. More surprisingly I seemed to have several followers who wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap. I’m guessing this behaviour is like the “friend collectors” on Facebook looking to build a network as vast as possible. In my view network quality comes from having real relationships not from having a collection of meaningless names.
Still on the networking angle, some people seem to post more about what they are doing as a human being, focusing on where they are and what they’re doing while others are more interested on passing along the most useful links they find. Both are good ways to build relationships, where the people on the receiving end will have a personal preference either way.
While I have choosen mainly to post links to interesting information (also the type of tweets I read the most), I can see it being useful when somebody says “travelling to Vancouver. Where to eat?”, and I could respond.
There are some who post a little too much for my liking, but then I am 100% empowered to do something about it (i.e. stop following), so I don’t mind this so much. The reason I don’t like this is that it drowns out those people I’m following who post sporadically. There’s something to be said for the quiet person in the room who only says something when it is really valuable.
My favourite feature about Twitter is that I can post straight from Netvibes just by choosing to share an article I’m reading. That’s very slick.
My Twitter mindset is very much along the lines of this post from the Rands in Repose blog. Twitter is a very personal experience, both as a consumer and producer of tweets. Don’t like what somebody posts? No problem, remove them. Don’t like what people say about your posts? Change what you say.
Even the decision not to use it is perfectly fine, but I’m not sure I’m there yet.
Want to follow me on Twitter? http://www.twitter.com/neilrichards/
February 13th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Neil –
Take a look at my Twitter page http://dougcornelius.com/twitter. There are a few good stories on uses for twitter.
Like you, I was scratched my head for a awhile trying to figure out what to do with Twitter. As my use of it grew, my use of it grew.
One big step up in utility was the launch of http://search.twitter.com. I run a daily search of topics that interest me. (That used to be KM. Now it is Compliance.) I tweets, twitterers and stories about the topic. Very powerful! Of course, there is search for @dougcornelius to make sure I hear calls in the echo chamber.