Twitter? Seriously? Actually, Yeah!
Fri 30 Jan 2009You might have noticed I now have Twitter Updates in my sidebar. Last year lots of folks who in all other respects I regarded as quite sensible, were banging on about this Twitter thing. My thoughts on Twitter at that time, before I tried it:
- What would I need that for?
- Doesn’t Facebook do status updates?
- If Facebook is blogging-lite then Twitter must be Facebook-lite. Just how low will all this go? Smileys as status updates?
Then, in the quiet time between Christmas and New Year, I started playing with Twitter. My new thoughts when I first started using Twitter:
- If I follow everyone I know, won’t the chatter become deafening?
- How will all this fit into the work-day world?
- As a software developer who needs to be “in the zone” to be most productive, this is going to be way too distracting.
- Who are all these SEO and Social Networking “experts” who are “following” me?
I was starting to feel like the guy in Rob Cottingham’s cartoon.
At that stage, Twitter wasn’t for me. But then three things happened to change my mind.
1. President Obama’s Inauguration
There must have been thousands of Twitterers in the crowd in the Mall for the inauguration. As they updated their Twitter status, they included the #inaug09 hashtag. Sitting at home here, watching a Twitter search for the #inaug09 hashtag, I could see all their updates flash by 10, maybe 20 times faster than I could read them all. It gave a real sense of being there, in amongst all the excitement.
2. A two-way conversation with the Twitterverse
One night, I twittered an idea. Many of my followers, liked the idea and “re-tweeted” it, spreading the idea to their followers, and so on. By being re-tweeted, the idea spread to an ever-widening circle of people I did not know.
The spread of an idea via Re-Tweeting (RT)
The idea was so popular that, for a short while, it was one of the most popular re-tweeted ideas on Twitter.
Message from ReTweetRadar
Eventually, this idea spread to people who didn’t readily agree with it - and this is the best part. What followed was a robust two-way conversation with these folks, initially online, then via telephone and eventually in personal meetings. The idea, and people’s positions towards it, was clarified by the use of Twitter.
3. Twitter goes mainstream
This morning, my local ABC radio station @612brisbane announced that it is now on Twitter. My major source of news is now on Twitter; I guess I’m now a fully-committed Twitterer, or a Tweep, or a Twit, whatever. Follow me at @MikeFitzAU.
January 31st, 2009 at 3:49
This is a fantastic story, Mike. I love it when an idea gets picked up, repeated and played with. Maybe 140-character tweets alone aren’t going to give us the most nuanced conversations, but they can sure spark them.
January 31st, 2009 at 10:32
Thanks, Rob.
Actually, the 140-character limitation is, in many ways, a good thing. There was no room for off-topic red herrings. Points were made concisely.