Is Twitter useful?
When Twitter first came on the scene, I was skeptical. How useful is it really to answer the question “what am I doing?” in 140 characters or less? I threw down a few tweets, didn’t get much return, and abandoned it after a few weeks.
Well let me tell you, my friends : Twitter is the real deal.
It’s incredibly simple. The interface has only a handful of links. And yet in spite of this, it’s incredibly powerful. Rather, because of this it’s incredibly powerful.
More so than other social networks, you’re encouraged to provide actionable information that’s locally relevant. (Some people use it to spam out links, but that’s lame.) Last week I found some friends through Twitter who were looking for coffee, so I joined them. I’ve found Milwaukee folks who share some of my interests. I’ve learned a bit more about the peculiar habits of my colleagues.
Twitter is not for everybody. (In fact, it’s probably not for most people.) But if you’re at all interested, I would strongly encourage you to give it a shot and try to find some new contacts through it. Here’s a start: twitter.com/tadfad
Filed under Milwaukee, culture, technology : Comments (5) : Apr 16th, 2008 by tadfad
April 17th, 2008 at 2:33 am
You know I’ve been trying to figure this twitter thing out as well. I’m slowly seeing its usefulness. Especially as I see new people following my tweets! Because it really is starting to lead to new people and new connections. Additionally it was suggested to me to try using twirl to monitor twitter instead of the site itself so you may want to take a look at that as well.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Dave, I think Twitter is the sort of thing that becomes useful all of a sudden. Once you tap into a network that Tweets, you can quickly get the pulse and branch out. Neat stuff.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Agreed. When your are sending out tweets to almost just a handful of people well it doesn’t have too much value, but as your followers grow it becomes more useful. Though I assume the extreme is a problem too.. i.e. too many to follow or following. But as my followers list has grown it is becoming more helpful to me as well for example it started this discussion.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Glad you are rejoining the community
I would disagree with you on the links though. Most of the people I follow because they send out interesting links to their blog posts or to sites they believe will add value to others.
I don’t really find tweets like “just had a delicious sandwich” or “my kids are annoying me” worthwhile and I will usually unfollow people who don’t link, opine or discuss things that are interesting unless they are friends that I interact with and I am interested in what they are doing. When I look for new people to follow that I don’t know, I specifically look for links in their timeline as well as what they are talking about, it helps me reach outside my group of localized friends.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:10 am
@Brandon - That’s the beauty of a simple, elegant interface like Twitter. You like links and can link up a storm, I prefer my links elsewhere so I can Tweet differently. Different usage styles, one elegant tool.
Who knew that 140 characters could say so much.