Lots and lots of people out there – including myself — seem to be trying to get their heads around Twitter … finding it useful, finding it irritable, finding its use by others of interest, or enormously irritable.
I’m trying to keep abreast of it all, while vowing to find the time to follow and be followed on Twitter in order to once again make the effort to assess its usefulness. If I can’t find the time to evaluate it, I’ll just let it be for awhile. If I find it lacking in utility, I’ll probably throttle the bird again!
I do try to find the time to actually read the official Twitter blog, but suspect that most users are no more able to find time to do that than I am. Took me awhile to discover it, but here it is, for what it’s worth.
Then there’s the “Twitter in Plain English” video posted at YouTube by the folks at Common Craft (same who did the “RSS in Plain English”), which I find very instructive but mostly evidence for why Twitter doesn’t fit my needs. I mean, the “What’s up?” “What’re you doin’?” dialog as an opener to inherent “Wow” factor of Twitter is just off-putting from the get-go. Obviously, a generational thing.
I still find the Jeremiah Owyang explanation of the utility of Twitter to be very inspiring (intriguing?) and I want to believe Brian Solis as per his post last week that Twitter is a “powerful and important tool in the realm of Social Media in order to participate and listen to the online conversations that are important to you.”
But, the tendency for folks to take the conversations that are important to them into the Twitter backroom for a chat is somewhat disturbing, as per Connie Reece’s comment that “Many of the bloggers I regularly read are on Twitter, so I have unsubscribed from their feed.” Really … unsubscribed from what one would assume do at least from time to time fall into the category of “deep blogging”, a la Steve Rubel coinage, in favor of what may well be a corner of the “lazysphere,” of what, 142 characters or less?!
To be fair, beyond the theoretical there are some business uses for Twitter, as Joel Postman noted in his recent revelation that JetBlue jumped into a recent Twitter conversation of his, nearly weirding him out in the process. But, there are clearly tons of useless and non-business uses of Twitter, as Stephen Davies rants about in complaint of self-important Facebook users who overburden their friends and followers with updates via the Facebook Twitter application. Meal culpa! Tried that as a substitute for real twittering and it’s unsatisfactory, I agree.
I dunno … I vowed to start Twittering again to find out for myself how useful it might be. But, dagnabbit … I just can’t seem to find the time to find out whether I can find anything useful. If I do eventually find something … well, guess you’ll hear it here. If you haven’t unsubscribed already!
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25 March, 2008 at 12:49 am
Michael, the conversations have “left the blogosphere” as Sarah Perez said on Read Write Web this week: “The truth of the matter is, like it or not, the conversations that once existed solely in the blogosphere have now moved on. People still comment, but in a lot of cases, those comments aren’t on found on the blog itself.” http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_conversation_has_left_the_blogosphere.php
I’ve unsubscribed from some Twitter friends’ blogs simply because I’m reading them elsewhere — either from an aggregator or Facebook. In no way have I abandoned “deep blogging,” and I still like commenting directly on other blogs and frequently do; but discussions on a topic also take place in the “back channels.”
Like most things, you’ll get out of Twitter what you put into it. The more people you follow, the more conversations you’ll see, and the more likely you are to interact. The 140-character limit can actually serve to focus thoughts as a “creative constraint,” as Merlin Mann put it in today’s post on 43 Folders. (http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/24/creative-constraints)
I agree with you on the auto-feed posting from Facebook to Twitter (or vice versa) and find it very irritating. But I disagree with you on the “What are you doing?” comment. 1. Most people don’t use it that way. It’s more like, “What has your attention today?” 2. It is definitely not a generational thing. My Twitter network runs the gamut from a 17-year-old high school student in Singapore to a 66-year-old entrepreneur in Phoenix.
But none of that is to imply that Twitter is right for you. If you don’t find it a useful communication tool, then it would be silly to waste your time on it. I’m one of those who happens to find it very useful as well as entertaining; it’s my virtual water cooler. I’ve hired freelancers I met on Twitter. One client found me on Twitter. And I’ve had “tweet-ups” or face-to-face meetings with a number of people I follow on Twitter. Have two scheduled this week, as a matter of fact. One was planned in advance for a friend’s trip, and one resulted because somebody answered the “What are you doing?” question with the fact that he was in Austin on business. 140 characters later, we had a date for coffee tomorrow.
25 March, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Hi Michael,
One of the uses that we have found with Twitter, is actually driving traffic to our blog. If you post links to recent posts from yourself and others that you read/find interesting – you will find that others return the favor when you write something they like. In fact, Twitter is one of our top blog referrers. Who knew?
Here’s to hoping you catch the Twitter bug…
~ Larissa
25 March, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Hi, Michael. Just wondering if my comment from last night wound up in the spam filter since it hasn’t been posted.
26 March, 2008 at 9:57 am
exactly that, Connie, and I got sidelined with agency work last night and this morning (imagine that!), so will post it now … and comment asap.
26 March, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Michael,
What tool are you using for Twitter? If you are just using the web interface (which is fine) I think you will get frustrated quickly.
I find with a stand-alone tool like Twhirl, Snitter, or any of a number of other options, I am better able to follow conversations, replies and direct messages.
It also seems easier for me to dip in and out of the watter with a stand-alone Twitter client.
Try one and see if it changes your usage habits.
26 March, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Hello Michael,
I share your skepticism with Twitter. It’s like a movie many people you know and trust rave about: you want to like it, to jump on the bandwagon… but something ineffable seems to be missing.
-Martin
2 April, 2008 at 3:34 pm
thanks all for comments. will try to find the time to find Twhirl, Snitter etc, Chris, and then find out how to use them. if not in this life, then in Life 3.0, I suppose.
Pleased to make your acquaintance Martin. I see you’ve used other than Twitter media platforms in the past. Will check out your book. Is the verb now to “book” as in to “twitter”? As in, I notice you’ve “booked” in the past? Seriously, though, like the Goodblogs concept. First time I’ve seen it on your blog. May sign up for mine.
9 June, 2008 at 10:00 am
Very similar views Martin, I’m struggling to find the real value of Twitter as the interesting tweets are lost in conversational clutter.
http://nakedbearmedia.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/the-twitter-conundrum-microblogging-or-conversations/