Twitter Review
Am I Twittering away or Frittering away my time?
I have been using Twitter for about 10 months so I figure it’s time for me to step back and evaluate the service and it’s usefulness. Overall, Twitter seems to be a time waster for me and most other users.
There are many Twitterholics that will say differently and tell you the Twitter is the greatest thing ever, but if you place a serious value on your time, the cost / benefit is not there for anyone but a small percentage of people that are probably already well known.
I have tried many of the plugins, applications, and apps that strive to make twitter more useful and user friendly but still have not found the magic bullet that transforms twitter from a toy to a tool.
The Bad
- If you follow more than a few hundred people, it’s impossible to keep up with your twitter “Friends”.
- Too much noise. Even the best Twitter users clutter up the stream with useless comments.
- One sided tweets are like hearing one end of a phone conversation.
- Conversations are spread apart in the time line so that they seem like random posts.
- Spam tweets are becoming a problem.
- Serial Followers.
- Serial Tweeters.
- Most posts add no value to the Twitter stream.
- Comment length limitation is too short.
- It can be addictive.
- Clueless founders waiting to cash out – even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
The Good
- If you already have a following on the web or in life, your masses can follow you and you can speak to all of them easily. (if they happen to be listening)
- It’s fun and interesting to track thoughts on current events in real-time through some of the search tools.
- It’s useful at conferences to exchange feedback about speakers, seminars, and the best parties to attend.
- If you like chatting with strangers about random things and have time to burn it can be a source of mindless entertainment.
I will continue to toil away and stick with twitter for now and try to keep raising my number of followers to the point where if I ask a question, someone answers. However, I am working to trim the people I follow to under 250. Moving forward I have set up some personal standards on who I will follow back.
If you follow me on twitter, I will follow back if:
- You follow no more than 300 people.
- You have more followers than you are following.
- We have some shared interests.
- You’re not a serial Tweeter.
- A quick glance at your time line reveals that your tweets aren’t mind numbingly dull.
Hopefully these measures will help me get more value out of Twitter while wasting less time digging through Tweets for that nugget of golden wisdom.
Popularity: 48% [?]
Category: Social Media, Twitter
Twitter didn’t impress me initially but I am sure it would beat Facebook in the near future. And dumb or not in a democracy one has to follow the people.
It’s still not popular in India but I decided to join it after reading about it in Newspapers for over 6 months.
The Folks managing Twitter are certainly using the Print Media well.
Nice post, twitter is becoming somewhat of an unpredictable beast. I think the spam and serial tweeters are only going to get worse. I am not sure how its going to evolve but it’ll be interesting if it keeps growing. I use tweetdeck, its a little better on organization, but can be a resource hog.
I’m of two minds about Twitter. On the one hand, I agree with you that Twitter has not helped my business grow. On the other hand, I’m enjoying Twitter simply as a social place. I follow fewer than 30 people, and most of them are people I know personally and enjoy. I only check Twitter 2 or 3 times a day – when I feel like a break. It’s kind of like taking a walk around the office and having a chat with my favorite people. And yes, that is just as much of a time waster in the virtual world as it is in the “real world”.