Posted by Ronan on Jun 3, 2009 in random, web 2.0 | 3 comments
I like twitter - I sometimes use it to set a status in both Facebook and twitter, but recently I’ve been questioning why am I using it at all? What purpose does it serve? What am I getting out of twitter? At the moment not a lot – it’s a bit of fun. Full Stop.
As an experiment I recently posted a string of words including ‘soccer’ ‘insurance’ and ‘limerick’. Within in 20 minutes I had people aka insurance sales people, football sites following me and ‘Castletroy’ following me – all their tweets were trying to sell me stuff. Not impressed.
I can see twitter been useful for PinPoints - get a tweet if there is an update to an addon or new feature added, or just to let know the users we are alive and well and actively working to improve the service.
Another question, can you get hooked on twitter? I think you can – some people are hooked and go over the top every day, tweeting 20+ times a day – you know who you are! It just make twitter noisy. How can you compete with someone tweeting and retweeting (RT) rubbish all day long?
Is twitter friend or foe? Mostly friend but it has it’s ulgy side too.
O (Fluffy) sent me this..
And I found this on despair.com – nice summary of the social networks 
He he he , I want that last one as a tee shirt. Would be fantastic.
Yea, that supernews thing is well funny , found it there a while back, its also spot on in terms of twitter.
However twitter search for me during E3 , which is on at the moment works very well, hate picking my way through games “journalists” blogs to hear what they would have thought was better, just like my twitter update and a link to a video. Or a journalists blog. Which I will ignore
Hmm… I had this question so many times. For long time, I didnt buy into Twitter at all. Then I tried it until they blocked SMS notification in Kuwait. Stopped for long time, now back utilizing Apps.
It can be quite useful, or quite a waste of time I guess.
Good:
- Get to know your friend’s updates on the fly when you like.
- With good followers, you can get answers to your questions quite quick from people you trust and care. I group my friends using TweetDeck, this makes it easier to focus on people I know.
- News source: Just follow trusted news sources you like, e.g. Cnet, Google, and others. Then you’ll get updates on the spot, be able to scream back your thoughts. I find it quite useful, and recently find my news on Twitter more than any other place.
Bad:
- It is quite addictive, and easy to consume all your time. Thats why I have group of people I focus on, it’s much slower in update. And then there is everyone. I dont care how much I miss, I just read whats recent.
- SPAM, Fraud. As you nailed it. People just send follow request to increase in numbers, and dont even try to fake it. First DM is, “Let me show you how to get 50,000 followers” This is a message for me to block them
@bashar, I hear you – I’m using twitter more and more as a source of information, links to reports etc. It’s pretty powerful. From the our the business point of view we (@pinpoints) use it all the time to connect with our users. We can communicate, help and listen closely with our users..
I and @pinpoints don’t tweet too often (some people just tweet all day on random rubbish.. ) but it can be quite addictive and sometimes I have to restrain myself!
I think you hit on a key item to twitter: ‘ good followers’ .. mention the word pizza and you get a reply and following from some random twitter user. Good followers should be treated with respect (like customers!)