Opinions: Correct Twitter Use

One of the key aspects to twitter, which certainly is what keeps me interested in it, is the variety of creative new ways/tools/uses that people innovate. The thrill of the chase is definitely what has so many of those in the twitterverse hooked. We still live in fear of the blue whale, we still tweet like crazy when someone from the real world press reports on it, and we still tweet far too much about twitter. "What are you doing?" seems to be a suggestion more than a question and I think it's fair to say that twitter lost half of what made it blogging in the instant that @replies and dm's were added as features - suddenly it's an SMS with privacy options.

People bragging about how many followers they have, and asking for more people to follow them, are growing habits that annoy me hugely. Whilst Metcalfe's Law states that: “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2)” and therefore serves as a small justification for a high number of followers/following; the average twitter user should have no need to worry themselves with their twitter stats. When you first start out there is an obvious need to find and follow like minded and relevant people so that you can begin a dialogue with the twitterverse. What's the harm in natural growth from there on after? I define this as following back those that follow you and following people you meet at events. If it's a corporate / business account that you're running then you have justification to want 'the numbers' just as you would with a website or blog, but audits shouldn't be for public viewing or announcement.

There's an etiquette for micro-blogging that is still being hammered out. The problem is that we're a new community and we're yet to define our own societal norms. Aside from the deletion of spam accounts, it is admirable that Twitter does not partake in "policing" of the network/platform (which is it?) and instead leave developing rules to the hive mind.

In terms of how I think you should use twitter, I refuse to believe there's a "one best way". Instead you invest yourself in it as much or as little as you'd like and reap the benefits in proportion to that effort. This is small scale blogging, and just as in the blogosphere the expression "content is king" applies vastly. Before Christmas I set up mled.me using twitter and I wrote about why I use twitter. Since then very little has changed for me, but @spode and I have started to explore how a blog can integrate twitter and we hope that our guinea pig (@tweetabouttech) can become a very prominent feature on TAT, beyond the news feed.

@spode left his post without conclusion, and I now find I am struggling to form one of my own. So instead, I'm going to let @stephenfry do the talking with this video.

Time to chip in here.
I'm not going to go into quite the same level of depth as Dan, but I'd like to address this Twitter usage issue as I think I see it from a slightly different viewpoint: it's called natural evolution. The clear split between personal and professional users.

In one corner you have the original Twitter message: "What are you doing?" Admirably backed up by a recent post from Twitter king Stephen Fry (http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/2009/01/29/twitter) where he declares: "For me Twittering is not a commercial or PR activity, it’s a fun and fascinating way to interact with all kinds of people who have so much to say. Since the primary function of Twitter is to answer the question “what you are doing?” my tweets will sometimes, obviously, involve news of publications or openings or events. Just be assured I am not using Twitter to advertise!"

Thanks Stephen by this is naive. You couldn't manage your 100,000 followers without the assistance of your army of agents, secretaries and general helpers. After all, you may only be using Twitter in a social/interactive way but to allow this your life is being professionally managed in the background.

Against this you have the undeniable fact that Twitter is an incredible mind hive/thought shower/[insert cringe worthy marketing term here]. For example, about 70% of my 300-ish followers are fellow journalists and PRs. This doesn't bother me, in fact I quite like it as a giant online resource. I can throw out questions and expect (reasonably) intelligent answers from a wide array of sources. In fact, when Twitter (almost inevitably) hits Facebook/MySpace levels of popularity I'm not sure I really want my friends hearing that I'm struggling with a Windows 7 beta installation incompatibility or witnessing my delight as I proclaim a product like NuevaSync to my geeky circle.

In essence then I think Twitter is headed down two unstoppable paths simultaneously and ultimately it will get torn in two with professional and social settings and possibly even separate sites.

As for the pros and cons of Twitter as a whole, I recognise it is a horrendous time swallower - that's a well known fact - but I think there are benefits in taking time to become established in an emerging medium. Take a look at the likes of US tech journo Veronica Belmont (twitter/veronica) who has been there since the very beginning in early 2006. She has amassed almost 60,000 followers and like Stephen Fry this has had a phenomenal impact on her career (arguably larger given Mr Fry was already famous). Veronica is a respected face, an industry celeb if you like - whether she signed up for this reason or not.

Consequently it's naive to think Twitter can continue its humble mission of "What are you doing?" at least in its current form. As a tool its potential benefits for the individual have grown so powerful that so we can't castigate professionals, small companies and even corporations for trying to better their prospects through it. Whether they can pull this off is another matter entirely. But just look at where it has taken the razor sharp humour of Twitter's Darth Vader persona (twitter/darthvader) in just 300 tweets...

Not the same level of depth - oh dear - I think I'll be swiping some of this for my own blog (www.gordonkelly.com) and posting it on Twitter...

Can you blame me?

I like that notion Gordon! From day 1 of my online life, I've looked for ways to slice up my internet use so that there are very few overlaps between social and professional aspects. I believe that the only lapse I'm guilty of is my 'open' blog which still talks tech and business but in a much less serious manner.

The biggest line I have drawn is over on Facebook, where I refuse to be discoverable and I will not just add anyone as a friend. I reserve that particular social network for those I have physically met and befriended in the offline world.

If twitter was to split as you suggest, would the new network come from Twitter or another company - much in the same way that Facebook is social and LinkedIn is professional in the 'larger' social network space? I would like to think that a different company would step up, offering to be the social version. This would leave twitter for its current user base - anyone in the tech early adopter crowd.

This social edition should have all the bolt-ons such as photo and video embedding, maps and GPS support so that it forms one complete package for the end user. A great way to appeal to the masses is to be as user friendly as possible and house everything under one roof.

Twitter could continue to run their product as the innovation hub and testing ground for the tech community - after all it is the API that makes it so powerful and accessible for developers.

Yammer is different, Spode, as it aims to be a social network that is a paid solution sold to any firm for use as an internal micro-blogging network. I'm neglecting mention of Identica, which is the open source version of twitter based on laconica. Where does this and the other (numerous) existing clones fit into the picture? It too could be deployed inside any environment or intranet - presumably meaning it competes with Yammer as well as twitter.

I believe there's still more to come from twitter and micro-blogging, both in terms of adoption and feature innovation. How 'normal' people react to it will depend on what needs they have that it satisfies.

One route which might stimulate appeal is to attempt to make twitter (or similar) replace the SMS.

Micro-blogging's appeal is its accessibility and mobility. It offers us the chance to have a name instead of a number; to have three tiers of privacy - world, semi private, completely private; to embed music, photos, videos and maps; to access the service through anything that's internet connected; and to serve as a fast acting news service and search engine.

I'll try and address these points briefly.
@Spode. Maybe, I'm unfamiliar of the service. Dan has pointed out some differences but I believe the key is BRAND. Twitter has the brand and that is key. eBay offers a poor service (getting poorer with each year) but no other auction site gets a look in. That is the value (and for the consumer - curse) of familiarity.

@Guest - I don't believe Facebook and Twitter are even remotely connected. The "Twitter is mass Facebook status updates for your friends" I believe to be utter - well - shite. The difference is Facebook has a certain 'distance' to it, with it I feel I get to know something about the LIVES of my friends on it and also the school friends I haven't seen in years but many - if not most - of my Facebook friends I have no desire to interact with. Facebook is largerly voyeuristic.

By contrast, Twitter is INTERACTIVE. Sure, there are professional sites simply rehashing their RSS feeds but they are largely catastrophic failures when you consider their number of followers when proportional to their site's web audience (the followers for 'gordonkelly' alone, for example, are 3x the size of the TrustedReviews Twitter profile - a site which has almost 2.5m unqiue vistors per month and nearly 14m page reads).

No, it is not about saying "I polished my car today" it is about interaction. It is a great online IM brothel amongst your friends/respected colleagues or others and one which goes on whether you are there are not. With Twitter I genuinely feel I have BONDED with virtually all of those I follow, I have not just watched them from afar via a sterile 'Today' page. I would even go so far as to say Twitter has helped improve social relations with a number of friends because we no longer need to engage in fatuous small talk - we already KNOW what is going on with one anothers' lives and have often commented on it so that when we meet up we already feel comfortable, cut the "so how has your week been..." and have far more meaningful conversations.

Personally speaking, if you find the people you follow say dull things then DON'T follow them. Cruel as it may sound I have many good friends in real life whose Twitter feeds I do not enjoy. I had the stones to remove them and we get on as if Twitter never existed. Likewise for those I do continue to follow I find I now feel genuinely closer to them. Their tweets delight, entertain and touch me about the goings on in their lives. One friend in particular I watch to see how his very ill son is coping in Thailand. From his Twitter updates alone and my occasional real time responses to them I feel more useful than 50 FaceBook wall messages, virtual app flowers and picture posts ever could.

In essence then, perhaps what I am trying to say is that while Twitter can seemingly be written off in generalist and trite statements it is actually a hybrid creating a new form of communication. A merger of Facebook and IM, a grand forum or cyberspace town hall where you can share your daily/weekly/monthly highs and lows in a way representative of what drives you in this wonderful thing called the human condition.

It sounds coarse, but if Twitter bores perhaps you need to consider finding more interesting friends to listen to, Hardest of all realise your own tweets paint a harsh self portrait and hopefully a realisation that just maybe more can be made of your own life to give you more interesting things to Tweet about...

(Attempt to shorten, once more FAIL - and I will be swiping it!)

Pat Kitano has written a great article over on Media Transparent about managing your social networking contacts. It's well worth the read and makes the valid conclusion that it's ok to have an extraordinary number of friends and/or followers provided you are comfortable using tools to filter out the noise.

@Spode you're right, so rather than replace the SMS we should look for uptake opportunities on platforms such as Twitter and match up message types with mediums.

@Gordon I agree with your comment about the power of the Twitter brand name, and so do the guys over on Microblink who wrote this article comparing it to Kleenex - the "face of facial tissue". Whilst protection exists to prevent a monopoly from emerging in any market, we naturally seek a system to become the standard.