The truth about Twitter

October 25, 2:53 PMRV Travel ExaminerKeith Bennett

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On February 21, 2009 I wrote the first of my 144 tweets. I was curious to see what this Twitter thing was all about and did it have any merit or was it a passing fad of the Internet. Over the last 9 months I have learned a lot about Twitter and how it has/is changing the way we communicate. I have gone from not understanding why anyone would care what I was doing to seeing some fundamental shifts in Internet based communications. Twitter has made a place for itself and when the Office of the President of the United States asks you to delay routine maintenance because of the relationship between your service and elections in Iran, you are having an impact.

From our friends at Quantcast.com comes this look at who is using Twitter. About half are male and about half are female. Of the four groups of income levels, about 25% is in each group. About half are college graduates and about half are not college graduates. The most popular age group is 18-34 with 44% then 35-49 with 28%. I am sure you can derive any type of conclusion you want from this data but to this writer it says that Twitter has broad appeal to Internet users.

When I first signed up for Twitter it was said to be good netiquette to follow those who followed you. Besides, how else would you get thousands upon thousands of followers? I very quickly discovered this was not going to work for me as many people tweeted about things that, shall we say were useless. Twitter limits your communications to 140 characters, which I thought would cause people to think about what they were going to say and therefore would result in a well thought out form of communication. It became clear to me, that those who are in love with their own tweets would simply post several consecutive tweets. In one case I counted 12 back to back tweets about a subject that was not deserving of one, in my opinion. I felt like the time I started a chat at a holiday party and found myself being told a person’s life story in a level of detail that should have made more than me uncomfortable. My thoughts turned to the best way to get out of this situation in the shortest amount of time. I have discovered how easy it is to un-follow someone. I knew if this was going to work for me that I would only follow those folks that had things to say and share that would be of interest to me, regardless of how many or how few that turned out to be. After 9 months I follow 75 Twitters (?) and what is more amazing to me, is that there are 85 people that think I have useful and interesting things to say. I see the number go up and down as some begin to follow me only to discover the communications I send out are useless – hello un-follow button.

 
It is beyond my comprehension abilities to understand how someone like Ashton Kutcher can have 3,878,367 people interested in what he says. He is only interested in what 254 people have to say. So much for the netiquette of following those who follow you. If I had that many followers, I would ask each to send me a quarter and pocket $969,591.75 and call it a day.

The Internet is a great tool and has some baggage that goes with its usefulness. I am very tired of Spam and it seems that anyone who wants to give you good free information makes you register that then becomes the catalyst for sending you never ending Spam. This type of communication is known as “push” as the sender pushes it to you and uses the fact that you registered with them as your opt-in or request for such information. There are those scummy firms that troll the Internet for your email address and send you all sorts of unsolicited garbage. With Twitter I get to choose who I want to listen to and can terminate this relationship anytime I want. I go “pull” the information from Twitter and do so because I have an interest. I opt-in based upon MY interest level. It does not always work out as expected with some tweets going on about all sorts of things that I have no interest in, in which case I stop following them and move on. Even Twitter has to deal with garbage, as I get some emails like the one telling me that DeeDee from Dallas is now following me. Guess what, DeeDee only has one follower and I now know how to block someone from following me, besides DeeDee would find me VERY boring.

I have discovered that Twitter can get me breaking news almost in real time. By following the folks at Denver Business Journal(denbizjournal), I get to know what’s going on in the business community of my town and will delve into those stories that are of interest to me. I enjoy the creativity of some who have mastered the new language of 140 characters (DavidCornDC) and keeping up on the latest gadget (Gizmodo). I can know the fly fishing conditions on my favorite river (tcreekflyshop) and follow the positions of the junior senator from my state (BennetForCO). There are those that teach like the Harvard Business School (HarvardBiz) and National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP_News). I stay up on great deals for merchandise that interests me (cheapoutdoors) and follow many RV related sites to know what’s going on in this ever changing industry.

All in all the Twitter experiment has been a good one for me and one I will continue to enjoy. I like their business model and I like the fact that I’m in control. I have even found a way to get the latest Twitter updates on my Kindle eReader. Like many things you have to invest some time to make this service work for you and need to tweak it so that it reflects your needs and interest. It would be interesting to get your thoughts and experiences with Twitter, so please leave a comment or drop a note to me on Twitter.
 Happy Camping

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