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How Many People Are Missing The Point of Twitter?

Posted by Anthony LaFauce on February 15th, 2008 10:00 AM

I am completely addicted to twitter. In the short time that I have been on twitter have nearly sent a 1000 messages and made some great contacts. I ran across a blog by Mike Stopforth claiming he doesn’t get the point of twitter. He proclaims that twitter demands too much of his time and he has no time to spare.

Mike complains that he needs to be online 90% percent of the time to really benefit from twitter. I say that is fine. I am online 100% of my awaken hours. I hate to admit it, but my phone keeps me online and mobile 24 hours a day. I pay a hefty phone bill to have this feature but to be honest I couldn’t go with out my mobile internet.

As for the complaint that twitter takes up too much time. Twitter is an after the fact form of communication. I can spend as little or as much using twitter as I want. The key benefit I find in twitter is I can access it as little or as much as I want. No one on twitter gets upset if I don’t respond to them right away because they understand that twitter doesn’t mean I will give an instantaneous response.

People who view twitter as a form of communication like chat or standard sms are missing the point. Twitter is a microblog, it is an ongoing chronicle of what I think and do. Like any blog the goal is to have a conversation with your readers, but that conversation isn’t always guaranteed. At best I can hope that someone finds my twitter musings interesting enough to respond.

I have said it before and I will say it again, to really get the value out of twitter you need to find a way to go mobile. Using it when you can find time to use it really makes twitter fun and interesting.

I have to admit, I try to get some of my friends using twitter and none of them seem to be ready to make the jump. Is twitter to far removed from standard communications services to gain a real following? Have any of you had problems trying to convince your friends to explore the world of twitter? Maybe you think twitter is useless, let me know.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 7 Comments

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    • v
    It is OK not to like twitter, it really isn't for everyone. I don't spend much time on it and use it more as a mechanism to get an opinion poll or to let friends know where I am. Twitter to me is a global concierge system.
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    • v
    I'm a twitter n00b, and really only have a handful of followers and people I'm following. Is there an easy way to get my Plaxo contacts into Twitter? There I have a lot more business contacts and I think it will become more interesting when I'm able to hear from more people.
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    • v
    It's not about not getting Twitter, it's about not benefiting from it. As soon as I started following more than 30 people, the value of Twitter drastically decreased for me because I did not want to put more than 10-20 mins per day into following that medium. The damage has been done, but I wonder if other people feel the same way.

    If I no longer listen to them, and they no longer listen to me, then it's just a bunch of individualistic people creating a stream of noise. Much like the little dots you would see on a TV that's not connected to a channel.

    I kind of equate commenting on blogs to that too. So many blogs, so many comments, and nobody can keep track of them all. In two days, I won't even remember that I commented here, so what is the value of that comment? All very philosophical, I know.
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    • v
    I have trouble convincing my friends of the value of Twitter. A lot of them have never even heard of it. I find Twitter useful because it's introduced me to new and interesting people I may never have engaged with online otherwise.

    I'm not one for "friending" people I don't know on Facebook so Twitter helps me network with others in my industry without me feeling like I'm spamming them or building a false relationship status with them.

    I use Twitter to learn about happenings in my industry and to hear other people's opinions. I can then respond or share my own thoughts as appropriate.

    I understand Vincent's point about it all becoming noise after a while but...As you follow people on Twitter, you begin to identify the voices that interest you most. Which means you'll be more likely to converse with them (who are probably a limited few) and derive value from those interactions.
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    • v
    Thanks for the link Anthony. As I said in my post, I have no doubts about the potential of Twitter and have seen how others benefit from it, but have almost felt embarrassed at my own lack of enthusiasm in the service. I've wondered whether it's behavioural or simply due to a lack of effort on my part. Interesting to hear other's views on it though.
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    • v
    I get value out of Twitter by having multiple accounts divided into my area of interest and subscribing/sharing with the friends that suit. For example I have one for work, one for my fashion interest, one for my significant other and so on...

    Because of my demographic I have not been able to get many of my realworld friends on yet. I asked an academic associate yesterday to join and she said: "What is Twitter? What is Twot? (on of my personas).

    It is, I think, a matter of time.
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    • v
    hey,

    I love twitter and I've been on it for less than a week now, I mean its a amazing source of information if people know how to use it.I am fed up of social networking sites and twitter is like a breath of fresh air applyin concepts of SNS at the same time .. I mean I got to know release of drupal 6.0 in 5 mins of release, I can ask questions from john resig and find out wot he is working etc .. Its a boon to web 2.0

    Read about why I love twitter

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