Twitter is the stupidest thing anyone could ever imagine inventing. If I said to you, "I've got an application that I want you to install that is addictive, time-consuming, cross-platform accessible, and otherwise as sprawling as kudzu," would you say yes? No. Of course not.
And yet, Twitter single-handedly changed my 2007. It added tons more connectivity to my universe. It's given me experiences I didn't have the year before. It's brought me new relationships of value with people who matter to my business life as well as personally.
There are tons of folks who have mixed opinions of Twitter and how to use it, why to use it, and so forth. Here's my take on how I use Twitter and/or how you might find some use in it, as well as some simple Twitter etiquette.
You show up with no friends, and the first thing you have to do is look around and see who you should add. Or you can dump your in-box into Twitter's machine and see if you know anyone. I often recommend this (adding your in-box), but not necessarily inviting everyone in your box to join if they haven't already. (Folks are starting to frown on that experience.)
However, there are some considerations before you jump in and add everyone. Here's something to consider from a guy with 103,000 or so people in my stream (circa October 2009):
Adding everyone to your Twitter stream means there's more energy, more breadth of interest, but also less ability to focus on a smaller group of people who matter more to you than the others.
Twitter is a conversation, not a broadcast. If you add lots of people, expect to try to talk back and forth with them, or lose steam fast.
There's a lot of "noise" to go with most Twitter people's "signal." Choose people who talk about things that matter to you.
Abandon all thoughts of Twitter being a professional marketing tool. It will have the occasional sway, but not as often as you need to make that worth it. (It's not meant for that purpose.)
If all else fails, look for people you know and like, see who they have as friends, and add them.
It's a virtual watercooler, for sure. You can stand around, blather about the news, about your dinner, about the movie you saw last night, or something that matters more to you. The content is yours. And you can work out quickly what your friends on the service choose to talk about more often than not.
But it's not exactly the right place for a conversation. There are plenty of better resources for that, such as IM, or taking the conversation onto a blog, or even conversing in the real world. Don't look at Twitter as a great conversation place, especially once you have a lot of friends. Look at it as an idea bank, a place to gather information, to inspire new thoughts, or to see what your friends are doing.
In the early 1990s, e-mail was a gatejumper. People would answer e-mail, even if they had no idea who you were. Then, somewhere in the late 1990s, blogs became the gatejumpers. People would interact with you if you commented on their blogs. Now? Twitter. Tomorrow? Not sure. It's getting really thin.
But, for some reason, Twitter has brought me into meaningful conversations offline with people I knew only through Twitter. My experience on Twitter really redefined my 2007, because it allowed me to communicate with some really great people, most of whom I'd not yet met in person but knew by way of their media.
I'm fond of saying that Twitter is the "director's commentary" for our media. It's in that form that I find Twitter to be a great gatejumper.
There's a scene in The Matrix where Tank (or one of those Matrix types) explains that he can watch the patterns of data and see something fairly clearly. I use Twitter like that a lot. I use it like a big, smart computer. I ask Twitter questions (meaning all several thousand of you), and I get back answers.
If you choose to accumulate a whole lot of Twitter friends, expect to use Twitter more like a flowing stream than a one-on-one catch-up-with-your-friends tool. I rarely see my close friends rush by in the stream. Instead, I have to set up little ways to watch them, like using Seesmic Desktop[113] to set up groups and interact that way.
If you're a small business looking at Twitter as a way to grow your business, I'm not convinced that it'll be the right tool for the job. If you're a big business trying to build relationships, you'd better really consider your Twitter strategy. Don't be the business; be the human. We interact with humans. Yes, we know you want to talk about your business, but talk to us as humans. Here's a weird one. Ask us what we're up to, and mean it. Then, if we like you, we'll probably want to talk with you.
Think that's wasteful? Think how much money and time you're wasting in the fast-forwarding wars.
There are whole swaths of the world that Twitter isn't really meant to cover. That's okay. There are other tools. Remember, being a "me too" and joining just because some people use it is like deciding you have to learn how to throw a 95-mile-an-hour fastball because you like watching baseball.
Try it out if you want. See whether it works for you, and then decide what to do with it.
Here are some specific ways to use Twitter that you might not have considered or that you might want to reconsider:
Start with Search. Go to
http://search.twitter.comand input words that pertain to your workplace, your product, your competitors, your locale—whatever you want to track. Learn who's talking about what on Twitter, and you'll immediately use it better than most people who start out.Consider a desktop client and a phone client. My personal preference is Seesmic Desktop, which requires Adobe AIR to run, or you can try TweetDeck.[114] I'm not printing the phone number here, because it feels like a dozen new Twitter iPhone and Droid apps come out every week, and platforms like BlackBerry and Palm are catching up, too.
If you want to promote your blog or podcast, at least try to do it conversationally. Ask people what they think about global warming as it applies to methane release on farms, and share the link. Don't just blurt out your podcast URL.
If you want to build real friends in Twitter, pay attention to who uses lots of @ replies, and see how they interact with others. Some folks use Twitter like a bullhorn, and others use it like a walkie-talkie.
If you want to use Twitter to meet new business colleagues, do what you'd do in other social media spaces: Learn more about them. Follow their links. Read their blogs. Get to know them. Don't just pounce all over them. It's easy to unfollow people in this space.
Try this. Instead of "What are you doing?" try asking "What has your attention?" I find the answer is often more useful to others.
Do your best to promote other people on Twitter instead of talking only about you and your things. If you find the good stuff, share the good stuff.