(Not) getting the most out of Twitter
blog Thursday 4th of September, 2008
I've had a couple of Twitter-related articles sitting around in my Evernote that I've been meaning to share for a while now. Daniel Schutzsmith (at the Barbarian Group) wrote about the twenty things he learnt using Twitter — with some pretty good points about using the service for both personal and professional work. And there's another good article (also in list form) by Margaret Mason, concerning etiquette in Twitter's relatively unique environment. As I say, they've been sitting around in my notebook for a while — and going back to them has got me thinking about the way I use Twitter, and specifically whether I'm getting all I want out of it.
I've been using the service for a while now — for a good few months before my first post in July — and it's pretty useful in my day to day life. I don't follow a huge amount of other people, and it's only very occasionally that I add someone new. For the most part, I use it for keeping up with people in my industry — obviously, it's a good source of quick, interesting links that maybe people wouldn't take the time to blog about. I've found that following a decent cross-section of industry 'names' is a great way to hear instantly about news that I might otherwise miss, and most of these people are also engaging writers — thoughtful and entertaining, even within the 140-character format.
So it's all gravy. Except that by only using Twitter in this way, I feel like I'm maybe not quite getting the most out of it. This isn't a complaint that I haven't got a whole bunch of followers hanging on my every word. I'm not going to claim the old chestnut of 'I only write for myself' — I probably wouldn't bother if I didn't think that someone, somewhere would find it useful or interesting. But I know that building a reputation (in any area) is something that takes time — when I started this site at the end of June, it was odd writing stuff that I knew nobody was reading, but the amount of returning users has grown steadily since then, and now I don't feel quite so stupid.
The real problem is one that I've faced repeatedly with online services such as Twitter — that I don't have a 'ready-made' base of people who will also be using it. This is thrown into contrast by the way I use the Facebook 'status stream' which is in itself a crippled version of Twitter. Although it's much less powerful in itself — not searchable, not portable, and not open to those who aren't 'friends' on Facebook — it has enough of a network effect that I end up using it far more often. And that's a shame.
I guess it's probably not just me that feels this way. Feel free to let me know who you are — maybe I'll see you on there shortly.
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