Time and time again, I find one of the biggest barriers people have to joining Twitter is that they don't "get it". And time and time again, I struggle to succinctly convey its value. The value is there that anyone using the service can appreciate, to be sure, but since Twitter is so free form and so open-ended, this "value" can mean wildly different things to different people.
Twitter is something you just have to jump into and explore for yourself to really understand why you'd want to be there in the first place.
Whether you're new to Twitter, or been using the service for a while now, the following link is an article that very nicely articulates how to get more out of your Twitter experience.
7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Jul 21, 2009
7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers
Mar 17, 2009
An experiment in crowdsourcing (and Twitter)
I recently posed a question to Twitter, and am posting it here to preserve it.
Background:
In the past 24 hours, I randomly got followed by 50+ new people, mostly marketers. Considering I had only 70+ followers prior to this, it's a pretty significant jump. In the past I've normally taken a stance where I only follow people who I find interesting and, in all honesty, most of these people aren't terribly interesting to me (sorry marketers).
This said, I wanted to see if I could get Twitter to make this decision for me. After all, who knows Twitter better than the Twitter collective?
Question:
I'm asking all interested in weighing in on the matter, do I:
- Follow them back, thinking "the more the merrier"?
- Continue to be selective in who it is I let into my friend feed?
If you'd like to respond, leave a comment here or Tweet me (@JonBaker).
Purpose:
I'm very interested to find out the results of this experiment - not only to understand what people's thoughts on the matter are, but how collaborative my little slice of the internet is.
I'll make my decision based on everyone's input in 24 hours time.
What the hell is Twitter? Is it contagious?
Regular readers of this blog, if you don't know what Twitter is I highly recommend you take a look at it. It's an interesting way to communicate, stay up-to-date with other cool people and above all it's fun. If you join up, give me a follow at http://www.twitter.com/JonBaker, and I'll follow you back (trust me, you're more interesting than the marketers).
Feb 18, 2009
On Building a Case for Twitter
Many times previously, I've tried to explain to others the wonder that is Twitter. Twitter, for like maybe the 3 of you out there not in the know, is a service in which you broadcast your thoughts and ideas to everyone who wants to follow (subscribe) to your updates. The catch is, these updates can only be 140 characters in length. It's part social networking, part micro-blog.
But why Twitter? What practical use does one get out of being a part of Twitter? I've heard arguments that people really don't want to be updated on every last detail of a person's goings-on, whether they are going to the gym to going to the bathroom.
There's a simple solution to that: stop following those people not adding value. If you've maintained a good friend list, a large majority of the tweets you receive (80%-90%) should either be entertaining, informative, or about people you do care enough to know all the little details. My friend list, for example, contains:
- A number of my friends
- Web comickers whose work I really admire and follow
- Video game personalities whose opinions I trust
- Bots (like woot) or official Twitter accounts (like AmericanMensa or BarackObama) that provide me updates
- Celebrities I find interesting
But I think the most compelling argument for Twitter is the same one that won over masses of people to more mainstream social networking sites: it's reaching a critical mass of its users. I remember a time when I didn't "get" Facebook. I resisted it for a while, not really understanding why people would want to put all of their information out online in some kind of database. But suddenly, all of my friends were on it. This gave me a compelling reason to join (which I did), in that I could connect with people that I know.
Twitter is starting to catch on in the same way. Twitter has an estimated 4-5 million users (not all profiles are public, leading to the estimate), with a growth rate of over 700% over last year's usage. It's growing, and fast. If your friends aren't yet - emphasis on yet - on it, there's plenty of other interesting people/services (besides me, of course) you can subscribe to.
Take this team of doctors for example, who decided to tweet an entire tumor extraction operation: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/twitter.surgery/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Join us, will you? Click here to continue reading "On Building a Case for Twitter"
Jun 18, 2008
Unwind updates and other housekeeping
Figured I'd take care of a few housekeeping items.
In order to not clutter up the homepage too much, I've implemented a "continue to read X" link at the bottom of the posts. Unfortunately I haven't gotten it working perfectly, as every post currently has one, whether or not I've hidden any of the post.
Currently, just today's Horatio Comics post has anything worth going to the "continue to read X" link. In the future, I hope to only have that link show up when there's content behind it, but I largely don't know what I'm doing and am learning as I'm implementing. Bear with me.
Also, as a heads-up, I'll be on vacation Thursday and Friday. And since I'm the sole content contributor on this blog, that means The Unwind is going on vacation too. Sorry to disappoint all 5 of you (myself included in that number). I'll be back next Monday, hopefully with amusing anecdotes and pictures to share.
May 15, 2008
Tweet Tweet
It's been almost a week with Twitter now and I definitely am enjoying it. I know this service has great potential, as I'm becoming devoted to it and none of my friends currently use it. You would think with the focus on short asynchronous messages having actual people to communicate to would almost be a friggin requisite, but no.
For one, I've got a little Twitter do-hickey right in the layout, meaning anything I update is included in there. It allows me to expand upon slightly what I've posted about. It allows me to notify anyone following me of a new post. It allows me to just post questions out there and see what kind of response I get from people following me.
Also, it's not as consuming as an IM client, email or social networking application that we use nowadays to communicate. With IM, it's frustrating when the person you're talking to is "afk", and the conversation's choppy. With email, if you answer one, you answer a million it seems these days with all the spam and noise that clutter our inboxes. Social networking? Takes wayy too long.
With Twitter, you don't have any of those expectations. It's just 140 characters and you're done. Want to read what your friends have been tweeting? Each one is only 140 characters long. To put it in perspective, I've already typed more than 140 characters for this paragraph and I'm not even done lauding Twitter yet. Seriously, when I check my Twitter account, I'm done in 3 minutes. And if I don't want to tweet, the expectation isn't there that I have to be tweeting all the time, I just stop tweeting.
But what really sold me was having one of those gee-whiz moments not too long ago when there was a fire drill at work. In testing out the functional of the service, I sent a Tweet from my phone. It was immediately added to my profile and displayed on the blog here. I was floored and instantly saw the potential. I could be anywhere and alert you to anything I might be thinking of.
It's moments like these that blow my mind how far we've come with technology, even in my short lifetime. The future is now. I seriously recommend you try Twitter... you'll fall in love with it too, I promise.
May 7, 2008
Unwind update - Twitter!
Twitter! This is my first foray into the service, but already I'm looking forward to being kind of a prick giving brief status updates from virtually anywhere! If you're already down the Twitter rabbit hole - as I see myself quickly descending into - feel free to follow me.
If you've never Tweeted before, Twitter is basically a very polished, well-executed microblog that you interface via the twitter website, sms text, instant messenger, carrier pigeon and telepathy (they're beta testing that feature, I think). Check it out for yourself at http://www.twitter.com/ and create an account. If you don't, you don't love America.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
