If for some reason you are actually reading this blog and haven’t heard of Twitter, then I don’t know what to tell you besides, go and read the Wikipedia Entry. For the rest of us, you know what Twitter is, and you may or may not know this new form of communication is a subset of blogging called microblogging (this is news to me as of a few weeks ago).
I started a Twitter account a few weeks ago as well, after looking down my nose at it for quite a while. Will I continue to use it? I’m still on the fence about it.
One reason I like Twitter is a lot of the people I follow actually tweet about interesting sites they’ve come across, something cool they are working on, or news that’s usually relevant. That in and of itself makes me want to continue using it, and seek out interesting people to follow. But sometimes good information is intermixed with mundane things I really couldn’t care less about…like:
- On my way to work! (every day)
- Going to bed (every night)
- Getting ready to [INSERT SOMETHING I DON’T CARE ABOUT]
- Oops I meant to say [INSERT CORRECTION FROM PREVIOUS TWEET]
- or, most frequently: [INSERT TECHNOLOGY HERE] is [broke-ass/slow/dumb]!
Unless you had to battle ninjas on your way to work, I don’t really care. And yeah, sucks your Internet is slow and you can’t get to that site. But that’s the nature of microblogging. While some people might enjoy that level of detail, others (including myself) don’t find it particularly interesting.
The value of microblogging to me is not necessarily in knowing your friend’s initimate thoughts right that moment, but to broadcast ideas (read: marketing) to a large audience. A popular figure (or their marketing firm) can open a Twitter account and communicate almost instantaneously with their target audience. Bloggers can tweet about their new post and it reaches readers even before it hits their RSS apps. Google picks up Twitter links almost instantaneously (I’ve seen spiders visit a place on my site I’ve only posted on Twitter…in less than an hour after I posted it).
The future of microblogging? It will go the way most fads on the Internet go: early adoption by geeks, traditional marketers exploit it, SEOs exploit it, and eventually people will migrate to the next new thing that isn’t so mainstream. Rinse and repeat.
Just wanted to mention that you omitted one exceedingly obvious tweet from the list: the infamous “what I’m eating right now” tweet.
@rick: Dang, I actually had that in my list too! Yes, that’s one common thing I’ve seen…and even guilty of myself.
Are you going to link this to the post as a trackback?
If the above statement was all I got out of your post, it was totally worth it! Thanks for the hot tip. I’m not off to exploit this technology for SEO purposes.
Too many websites to consider being a part of. Commitment failing. “The Wall” on Facebook is like Twitter and a decent source of amusement. Why do I need a separate blog to post short thoughts?