What’s all the Twitter about?
By now if you are not a user of Twitter, you have at least heard of it. It has experienced an almost unbelievable growth in its short lifetime. Twitter is a micro-blog that anyone can participate in. Each post, a tweet, is limited to 140 characters. That’s not very long so it’s pretty easy to read a lot of posts. Twitter asks the question “What are you doing?” Some people actually use it this way… you will see things like “brushing my teeth” or “going to bed” or “eating.” However, most use it to communicate things that they consider more important than those mundane examples.
There is a lot of good and worthwhile information flowing on Twitter every hour of every day. So much, in fact, it’s a bit difficult to keep up with. There is also a surprising number of celebrities (politicians, stars, athletes) using Twitter. You can follow them all and see what they are saying. Even Barack Obama is there, and I believe he is the most followed player.
You follow anyone you want, and people follow you. Of course the more people you follow, the more tweets you will be exposed to, and the harder it will be to develop relationships with your Twitter “friends.” You have the option to communicate privately with a friend (a follower that you are following) by using the Direct Message, or DM feature. All other postings are visible to everyone, but mostly to those following you.
Twitter is so new (started mid 2006) that appropriate Twitter etiquette and protocol is just developing. It is clear that many people have likes and dislikes about what others say and/or do. It seems that the majority of users dislike being contacted automatically with a DM. This is a fairly common practice when saying welcome to new followers, except they don’t like the automatic message because it’s not personal. This can get the relationship off to a bad start. In addition, many don’t like Twitter being used for commerce but I seriously doubt that will stop. Marketers will market where they can if it brings in business. The marketing I see personally does not bother me. Remember it’s limited to 140 characters and real easy to just skip the tweet.
So, should you get involved with Twitter? Why not? It’s going to be here for awhile and it’s growing. About one year ago there were 600,000 users and now the number is somewhere north of 6 million. Twitter subscriber numbers are doubling every month. I say you better jump on now while there is still room. I should warn you though, it can be addicting!
Happy Tweeting!
Wayne Weeks
