Not too very long ago, I began using twitter. At the time, I didn’t think that I would be using it much and that it wouldn’t hold much value for me.
I anticipate having issues with keeping updated with it. I don’t use SMS much, so updates via cell are pretty much out. I may have it open in a tab from time to time, but my fault there would be that I have a horrible memory for things like opening that tab to begin with.
A couple of things have happened that have mostly proven that wrong. I still don’t use SMS much and I still don’t update much by cell. For the most part, that is because I hate having to use the phone pad to type messages. It takes me way too long and ends up annoying me. But Twitter has also made me wish I had a blackberry or similar on several occasions over the last few weeks.
I must say though, that I have found myself using twitter much more than I expected. I’m up over 100 twits (twitters?) now. I added a little plugin called twitterfox to my firefox install and that has made it much easier to keep updated and use the service. I’m aware that there are some desktop applications available to use twitter with, but about 80% of the time that I’ll be using twitter, I’ll be at work, so I don’t want to install any extraneous programs. I may give a few of them a try at home however. Twitterfox does right well with it and makes it fairly easy to keep updated as long as firefox is open, which it usually is.
Twitter is somewhat addictive. It’s way more conversational than a blog or any other website. It’s the closest thing to a IM client that there is currently available. The nice thing is that you can “follow” several conversations at once without a separate window open for each and also, without the clutter that having all those conversations would be in one place. They are still in one “stream” but, with the @ reply function, it makes it much easier to find the twits that are aimed at you and those that belong to a different conversation.
I also see the potential for using twitter (in fact it’s suggested by many of the pros) to grow your blog audience. Twitter is a much more personal conversation than the blog because of it’s IM properties. Because of that, readers and other bloggers can grow a relationship much quicker and also have that relationship be much stronger through the interation that they get on Twitter.
So far, I’m impressed with Twitter and will be looking for some more ways to make it even more useful to me and you.
If you’d like to have a conversation with me, you can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/thatedeguy
About Shane Ede
Congrats on reaching the 100 update mark. Once you get in rhythm you’ll find it easier posting updates and worry less about what should be posted.
BTW the twitter updates are called ‘tweets’ if you want to use the vernacular. I’m still resisting that term, but maybe it’s just a guy thing.
Less is more with Twitter, so recommend you don’t go too crazy with updates or you’ll encounter pushback from your followers.
Oh man, are you kidding me? Somebody bought the cliche phrase to be autogenerated in that text link in my comment? I really, really dislike those kinds of links in the post body but they are 100 times worse in user comments.
Is there no way to turn that off in the comments section, Shane?
REALLY dislike it. I didn’t link that, nor did I authorize it to be linked under my name and yet it looks like I did. Grrr.
Thanks for the tips TDavid! Not sure I like tweets either, but when in Rome…
I’ve always taken the quality over quantity approach, so I can’t imagine that tweet frequency will be a problem.
Honestly, TDavid, I thought it was off for the comments section.
It regenerates the links each time the site is loaded, so I can’t seem to get it to work in the comments. What browser are you using? If you don’t mind me asking anyways. I’d like to know to test.
I’m currently at work, but will take a look at it tonight when I get some ‘puter time.
Thanks for pointing it out though.
There, on refresh, they did show up in the comments. I’ll have to fix that this evening.
Twitter is ok, but i am noticing alot more spam tactics over in there now. Get followers from out of the blue.