Is Twitter Really Worth Your Time?
I can’t believe how often I now hear the word twitter throughout my day anymore; from the local National Public Radio station telling me to ‘follow them on twitter,’ to local news networks boasting about how they are now tweeting, even my 50 something year old boss chats up her tweeting savviness. Every blog and website online (including this one) have a link to ‘follow’ them on this strange communication device. It seems that most everyone these days is happy to announce to the world that they participate in this trendy online service, even if they can’t correctly conjugate the word twitter.
I too have a twitter account, but after using it regularly for some time I’ve finally come to the point where I have serious doubts about its usefulness. It’s not that I don’t know how to use it or what potential it has for both business and individuals, I’ve already written my own thoughts about how to get the most out of twitter in an older post. In fact, I can still appreciate twitter when I receive actual information of value from experts in particular industries, local news, and other important updates from companies like Dogfish Head. Unfortunately, it is increasingly rare to actually find these few worthwhile ‘tweets’ amongst the onslaught of useless and trivial information within the ‘twitterverse’.
Due to the ridiculously mammoth amount of pointless information being shared on twitter (including those long personal instant messaging conversations between two users) many people on twitter have resorted to platforms designed to manage the garbageflow such as tweetdeck. Tweetdeck effectively allows you to screen out messages from people you don’t care so much about and create individual matrices of conversations, (ie lumping all personal contacts into one frame, all business contacts in another, all news sources into a frame and so on).
Honestly I don’t even know how people use twitter without tweetdeck, how can anyone possibly sort through so many pointless updates? Do I really care that someone I know is in the process of picking up their kids? Wondering what to wear? Getting psyched about National Mustard Day? Well, possibly the last update mentioned but you get the idea, it’s called INFORMATION OVERLOAD!! Even the most useful, informative, important tweets get lost in the mess.
Am I suggesting that twitter has lost its ability to be useful in some ways? No. Is it still worth investing time into? … Maybe. Call me a twiter, I just don’t think this trendy platform is the best use of time for business or personal use anymore.
I invite you to share your own recent success story with using twitter in the comments section below. My guess is that they are few and far between. That being said, I can certainly appreciate twitter success stories such as Kogi, this is how twitter SHOULD be used. Restaurants and news agencies are in my opinion the best positioned businesses to take advantage of twitter.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, twitter seems destined to become ever more overloaded with mindless nothings that increasingly drown out any value that might exist from this popular free service.
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I love Kogi! Their trucks is on my block on Wed. and Fri.! You have to try their tacos. But I am hooked on twitter to. I use it to follow other people that have the same interest I do, but even with TweetDeck, its so hard to sort everything out.
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I really didn’t like Twitter when I first started using it. TweetDeck helped to organize and filter, but the number of tweets flying past me put me into information overload. Over time I learned to create enough groups on TweetDeck to catch the tweets I want to see, and I spend a few minutes looking through random tweets, but never more than 5 or 10 minutes.
Using Twitter in this way has helped me to make great connections that are driving traffic to my website and blog. I have also made 2 collaborative connections over the last couple of months that have led to major projects that will boast my income.
Do I love Twitter? No! Would I say that it can be helpful in building your business? Absolutely!
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
It’s cliched, but you get out of Twitter what you want.
It’s raison d’aitre is a conversation tool, so who cares if people talk about the mundane stuff in their lives? That’s conversation, and that’s Twitter’s strength.
You want business use - follow the business guys. You want retailer info - follow the retailers.
As far as usefulness of Twitter, there are plenty of examples: 12for12k, Tweetsgiving, Twestival, the Mumbai reports, Samantha Knutts reporting for WarChild from Darfur, Obama’s political team gaining support during election, the swine flu pandemic, CNN using iRepot - these are just some examples.
If you’ve become bored with Twitter, that’s obviously something you have to decide whether you use it still or not.
But to say it has no use when it’s one of social media’s best tools seems a bit of an overstatement.
June 7th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
[...] mean is Twitter worth it? Social Media says yes. Social Media Defined says no. I hate it when they fight. Also, I hate it when I ask a question and there are like 7 [...]
January 9th, 2011 at 2:18 am
I think twitter is big enough that sticking to only following people your intersted in instead of hoping for them to follow you back keeps it a fun and more productive tool to anyone and their business.
What good is a follower if they dont care about your niche.
June 14th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Twitter is useless and complete nonsense. I can’t believe grown adults actually use and follow this ridiculous fad. Tweeting might be good for 13 year olds but it has no place in the adult world. People need to do their own research to find things out or try being a real friend and call that ‘acquaintance’.