Although I have had a Twitter account for quite some time, I only really started using it about 3 months ago. As it is good usance to review after 100 days I thought I'd share my thoughts on using Twitter. Not that the world is waiting for another self-proclaimed social networking guru, but I just want to share and check my thoughts with others.
I found that I see Twitter as an extension of my working environment. It is how I act in the workplace in real life. I share knowledge and go looking for new insights. If I don't understand something I'll ask. If I do not agree I'll question and be my usual critical self (it is a gift you know). I also found I do not want to be all work and no play. So I utter things I would around the water cooler or coffee vending machine. Or have the small conversations I would have with people I meet on the go, at the trainstation or in the elevator. I like those short dialogs with people. I like the feeling that just for a short time I found a kindred spirit, or gained a new insight by an unexpected view of a virtual stranger. I like meeting new people and I like feeling connected.
But just as in real life there are things I do not like or get about people on Twitter. I do not get following zillions of people. The other day I started following someone who I thought to be interesting. He has more than 300.000 followers and to give him credit, he was also following a 300.000+ people back. But I wonder how you engage with so many people. There is no way to follow so many people and have time to do anything else worthwhile in your day to day life. I ended up unfollowing the person.
Also it seems to me that a lot of people use Twitter in an oldfashioned "one-to-many communication" kind of way. They use Twitter to broadcast and send out their messages. If they are real pros about it they automate, repeat and schedule their messages. There is in principal nothing wrong with all of these things but at times I feel like I am listening to the ongoing repetitive SOS signal on the island in Lost. To me it doesn't feel very sincere and the lifecycle of these messages are very short. Eventually I end up unfollowing those kind of people because they only advertise. They aren't sharing, they aren't opening up for dialogue, they never initiate dialogue.
I mostly use Twitter to learn and share about professional topics. I tend to follow people who do the same thing. Sometimes however people do not live up to my expectations. My bad, as they are my expectations. Having said that though I just don't get the "I woke up", "I had a coffee", "I arrived at the office" kinda updates. Who cares? It boggles my mind that those people actually have followers. I must admit that in one particular case I waited around for some big revelations, but they never came. So after 10 strikes, I unfollowed.
Sometimes I find messages undecipherable. It happens with messages that have lots of @'s, #'s and http's in them. I am not sure if it is just me but I find that my brain simply rejects them. My brain will command my eyes not to read them. Someone will probably do or is doing a study into the effectiveness of the 140 character message, but I am betting that all those at-signs, hashtags and URL's in one tweet add to the ineffectiveness of messages.
All in all I really like Twitter as a tool to meet, share and engage. I try to add a bit of myself to the mix in the process. I liked doing the #FF FollowFriday recommendations. But with the brain shutdown at the sight of too many @'s and wanting to be sincere in my recommendations I started limiting the number of #FF's. So now I #FF 4 people every friday and motivate why I think other people should follow them too. It sparks dialogue, which I enjoy.
Want to share your thoughts on Twitter?
