Twitter “Everywhere, Anywhere Messaging”, Speed-dating
March 11, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
After mocking the “Look what I’m doing now! Pay attention to me!” aspect of Twitter, I was drawn inexorably into the social milieu by the excitement being expressed about it. (See previous post.)
(Update: I rewrote this from a mini-clip to a full post.)
I have to admit, the ability to see what people I know are up to is intoxicating, in a way. Most of the PR people I network with live in other cities, so bumping into them at the cafe, bar or networking event isn’t going to happen for me.
Brian Solis on the popularity of Twitter among the digerati, and the ability to stay connected and communicate faster than by blogs, instant messages and other methods:
“twitter is the message heard around the world – so to speak or so to read. “It’s an incredible phenomenon that is spreading faster than online parodies of Snakes on a M F Plane…and in my opinion, it has to be the fastest growing social tool out there right now.
“It’s everywhere, anywhere messaging so that you can stay in touch with friends, fans, stalkers, and associates whether on the Web, instant messaging, or through text messaging. Each update is broadcast simultaneously to your ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ so that the conversation can travel across borders and oceans faster than any blog post.”
One downside is the constant chatter of conversations between two people that really would be better done by instant messaging. There doesn’t seem to be a proper Twitter etiquette in place yet to take those messages offline (so to speak), so they don’t pollute everyone’s stream of comments, information and idle chit chat.
On the other hand, the whole idea is to be fairly spontaneous and part of a community. If everyone has to constantly second-guess their comments and edit themselves because of the possibility something they say might seem incredibly narcissistic, the conversation shifts to something more formal.
This is the blogging equivalent of speed-dating. How much self-editing do you want people to make?
If you find someone annoying and self-involved, you have the option of deleting them from those you follow on Twitter, as Scoble suggested last night. “We know Twitter is inane”, he added.
Update 2: Brendon Connelly offers Several Habits of Effective Twitter Users.
Tags: twitter, friends, communications, twitter, robertscoble, narcissism, briansolis
I’m a big fan of Twitter and have been enthusiastically talking about it since joining. But I agree with you that there’s unfortunately a lot of exaggerated “pay attention to me” behavior also. It’d be interesting to see the demographics of Twitter users, and whether much of this attention-seeking is correlated to factors such as age and/or particular industries.
If you’re an extrovert, posting to Twitter just makes sense.
If you’re an introvert, your first thought is, “I’m not sure I should put that in writing.”