The recent surge in twitter press is amazing. A lot of my less technical friends and family have been asking me about it, usually with skeptical tones. Why would you do that? You use it--really?
Follow me on Twitter.
Or in Google reader.
Or by email.
Oh, and tell me what I should blog about: yegg@alum.mit.edu
At first, I too was skeptical. It took me a while to adopt and then even longer to make regular updates. Even now I've only made 322 of them.
Recently I had a long discussion over email about the value of this type of technology. The short version is, upon reflection, I've really come around to its usefulness. So I thought I'd enumerate the use cases where I've found twitter particularly helpful, both personally and professionally.
Recently I had a long discussion over email about the value of this type of technology. The short version is, upon reflection, I've really come around to its usefulness. So I thought I'd enumerate the use cases where I've found twitter particularly helpful, both personally and professionally.
- It keeps an eye out for me. The very first day I started using twitter, I was at the right place at the wrong time. I had showed up 8 hours early for one of our monthly hackathons. I had twittered where I was and my friend almost immediately informed me of my mistake.
- It's an extension of my Facebook status. If you use the Facebook status update feature, then you might as well use twitter too. In fact, when I update my twitter feed, it updates my Facebook status automatically (via the Twitter Facebook app).
My set of twitter followers and Facebook friends has a decent amount of overlap, but by no means all. Because they are different sites and different technologies they tend to accumulate slightly different types of associations. In particular, it's common to get Twitter followers who you've never met. But you also get friends who for whatever reason aren't your Facebook friends (at least not yet). By syncing the updates you are reaching more of your friends with your personal updates. I like that because I suck at keeping in touch on a one-to-one basis. - It keeps me closer to customers. I monitor twitter search for mentions of Duck Duck Go (my startup). It is really interesting to see what people say "in the wild" and because of twitter's ease of use you get more (and different) commenting than you find on blogs.
- It allows for more (and different) customer communication. I follow the users I find in #3 using my company's twitter feed. I also send out updates about things going on with the site. It turns out that this method of two-way communication generates different feedback than our other methods to connect with customers, e.g. this blog, our feedback page, Facebook, etc. I've even gotten unsolicited bug reports!
- It helps me meet more people (in person). I'm an INTJ and have historically been terrible at meeting new people. Twitter really eases that burden for me. As pointed out by another friend, it gives you great ice-breakers when you meet people for the first time (who you've previously connected with on Twitter). For example, I follow a lot of people in the Philly startup community, but have not yet met all of them in person.
- It makes me feel more connected. I work from home, by myself. Twitter helps me get to a semblance of a multi-person office.
- It helps me spread news/links. You need a decent amount of followers for this one. I don't really have that many, but with the amount I do have it is enough to get benefit when spreading news and links about my company or otherwise. Often people will re-tweet exciting news (re-send my message to their followers).
- It helps me keep abreast of news/links. Similar to #7, but from the other side, I often get news/links from people I follow. These are usually things I would have never seen, e.g. info about other startups, local events, etc.Useful enough for you?
