Loving and Hating Twitter in Five Easy Pieces

I love twitter. What blogging is to email, twitter is to instant messaging (IM) ... and then some. You can follow me on twitter as Timberry. I'm like a fish with a shiny new thing. And, with due respect to the MSNBC line (if you don't get it, you're too old) -- I'm 61. But that's nothing: my 89-year-old dad is on twitter too.

Consider this picture of Twitter usage published earlier this month on TechCrunch:

Something's happening there.

1: Vocabulary

But first, some vocabulary (just to get it straight): twitter is web publishing in 140-character snippets. A tweet is one of those snippets. To tweet means typing those snippets into twitter. To follow is what you do (takes a click) to get access to somebody's tweets. A follower is somebody who follows you. To retweet means to take somebody else's tweet and tweet it again, giving them credit, to your followers. Your followers can also be called tweeps, or sometimes tweeple.

Is it all too cute? Avoid the now-famous Stephen Colbert gaffe with the wrong verb.

2: I Hate Twitter

About twitter backlash. The Daily Show take on it, Samantha Bee ignoring the interview while peering into a cellphone keyboard, was hilarious. The twitter Facebook users accuse it of twitterizing itself.  The google search for "twitter bashing" turns up half a million hits. "I hate twitter" is good for more than 18 million.

So here are some good reasons to hate twitter:

1. Twitter clutter. The "I'm having dinner now" or "I'm going home now" inanities. I did that too when I started, as if I were telling family members "arrived in Denver airport." I get it now: Nobody cares what you're doing. Tweet something interesting, or nothing at all (note to self: and don't try to make cute contractions for twitter clutter. Doesn't work.)
2. Twitter selling. Ads are ads, even at 140 characters per tweet. Infomercial I don't mind, when there's actual info -- happens a lot -- but there is selling going on. (The good news, though, is that you only get that once. Don't like it? Stop following. A lot like changing the channel. If you don't follow them, they don't bother you).
3. Tweeting at meals, in conversations, or at meetings or movies or events is really annoying.
4. Tweeting while driving is at best stupid, at worst, manslaughter.
5. People collect followers. The more, the better. The twitter version of counting friends in Facebook. Now we have some web applications designed to get you more followers. Ugh. People measure themselves and compete on number of followers.
6. It's really distracting. It gets in the way of getting things done (Of course, that's actually a good thing disguised as bad; the same would be true of everything fun or interesting except work).
7. I hate it that Steven Wright, the comedian, master of the one liner, isn't on twitter (that's a good thing too, because maybe he'll start.)

3: I Love Twitter

Consider this an enthusiastic hooray for relationships in 140-character snippets. Crazy as this sounds, ironic indeed, but some of my twitter friends feel like real friends to me. When they tweet their latest blog posts, I go, I read, I comment. When I tweet my latest blog posts, they go, read, and comment. They recommend me to others. I recommend them. I ask for recommendations, they respond. Sometimes it's just "I liked your last blog post" and sometimes it's "does anybody know a restaurant in Portland that does Thanksgiving dinner?"

I blog a lot these days. I care about other people in the same general topic areas. It's nice to follow them on twitter.

So, then here are some good reasons to love twitter:

1. Keeping up with some professional relationships. I know that seems incredible, more so if you knew me. I'm kind of a hermit. I hate cocktail parties. But I like keeping up with people in twitter.
2. Fascinating real-time constantly scrolling updates on interesting new blog posts, news, issues. I follow some people who I respect, and they point out interesting ideas, posts, etc. I work in tweetdeck, and it's like having a scrolling world of interesting little tidbits.
3. Writing. Sometimes good writing. Good tweets are amazing. See number 5, below.
4. Publishing. Think of it as publishing short snippets to people who want to read them.
5. Someone's tweets get repetitive, or become sales pitches, or just twitter clutter? Unfollow them. It's as satisfying as changing the channel.
6. Taking responsibility: people with real names and real pictures. You can't delete a tweet.
7. Maybe Steven Wright will get on twitter in the future.

4: Twitter in Business

Seems like almost everybody on twitter is a social media marketing expert offering to show the rare non-social-media-marketing experts how to make money on twitter. Seems that twitter can be good for people in the expert business. But is it good for business? Or, the question of the last month or so, are you an idiot if you're in business and not in twitter?

Twitter is no more good or bad for business than telephones, letters, conversations, or pies in the face. The medium isn't the message; the message is the message. I have lots of twitter friends who are straight, like it, keep in touch with it, and -- lo and behold -- that's good for their business. But is being in twitter good for business? Nope.

I can't figure out twitter and relationships. It's oxymoronic, and, sometimes, just plain moronic. But it brings me closer to blogging and web people I like and respect. Paradox, I suppose

5. A Few Good Tweets

At its best, it really is writing, and a new kind of self publishing. For evidence, I call on David Petheric (clarocada on twitter) and his post Top Tweets of 2008 on DigitalBiographer.com. He gets the credit for the collection, and I'm choosing just a few:

• brandmilitia: Sometimes the fastest way to screw up a company's social media strategy is by letting the marketing department run it.
• chrisbrogan: Just made a VC choke somehow on my speaker's fee. Tough times for startups in 09, kids.
• copyblogger: I've got to go on a carriage ride through Highland Park tonight with 4 kids and 3 lawyers. This is why God gave us scotch.
• boris: "Don't talk unless you can improve the silence." -- Jorge Luis Borges
• SaraD: Accidental Death & Dismembership Insurance. I passed on that. I choose Membership.
• mathie: I need a pair of headphones. Or a shotgun and at least 5 cartridges. Or an office of my own.

There: see what I mean? Good stuff. It reminds me of something that came over the teletype 38 years ago when I was on the night desk at UPI in Mexico City. Rumor had it he put this onto the service and walked out for good. His tweet, 38 years ahead of its time, was:

"Too much work, too little money. I quit."

Conclusion: a quote from an NBC web story about twitter:

The nicest thing about Twitter might be that it's a grassroots medium nobody has quite figured out a way to make money off of yet. Not even the guys who created it.

Follow Tim Berry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Timberry

Comments

[ESLundo]

OK, so Twitter is a celebration of the trivial, but there is more to Twitter than simply knowing way more about someone's life than you could possibly care for. Here are three Twitter topics to consider.
1. Portable audience. So you push your marketing v.p. to start twittering or, if you are in media, you push your reporters to twitter all the time. Now what happens when that marketing v.p. or reporter is a super Twitter success and leaves the company? Who owns those Twitter followers? Right, the guy or gal that does the Twittering. In the social media world, the audience belongs to the organizer.

2. Who owns Twitter? Not you. One of the big trends in media is to generate leads for advertisers. To generate the lead you have to control the web path that the customer travels. I think you will see the rise of Twitter like systems, but owned by companies that want to acquire and track loyal customers. Twitter, like all big media entities, has to fracture at some point.

3. How will you make money on Twitter? You won't, Twitter will. End of story

[bugsbonzai]

I follow some people on Twitter. Tweets about monotonous activities should be avoided. It's best utilized as a way to get a feed of wry, brief thoughts and commentary on random subjects. I treat it like a random quote book, except the quote book is filled with people you know or people you are interested in. Peering in on Twitter is a great digression, a way to reorient your mind on alternative concepts without wasting a lot of surf time. I like following comedians like Michael Ian Black, as most of the tweets are throw away lines that are just fun.

[tjdestry]

Okay, so it's sort of like IMs. Which are an obnoxious, invasive interruption. I check my email compulsively, but IMs are like the person next to you on the plane who won't shut up. And you're telling me that Twitter is like that, only moreso?

Quite a recommendation.

[CubanVoice]

I wish I knew what you were talking about!

the only tweet I know is the one that saw the putty tat!

[Dan Congress140]

Far from being a pet rock, coming up with a platform that forces people to get to the point is a powerful mechanism for communication. Both a lot, and very little, can be said within 140 characters.

I've enjoyed it so much we've been working on a project to aggregate all of the legislator's tweets in once place: www.congressional140.com

[princeleo]

I guess you bought a pet rock too...

[thebigbike]

I'm beginning to get it -- by successively eliminating the aspects of relating to other humans ( no actual face to face, then no actual voice then not enough space to explain context or nuance) that honor human richness ( or indeed human evil) we make it easier retreat further into a world where unpleasantness can be deleted rather than actualy experienced and "joys" dont bring any concomitant ( would one use a word like concomitant in a tweet, or does it take up too much space?) untidy responsiblities or effort..... but then I AM too old to get it. As I have tattoed on my right forearm where I can see it regularly... a prehistoric tweet ( I Guess) "Its all over now baby blue"

[salvesons]

Why should Twitter and tweets replace perfectly good ways to send the same information, or even more/better info?

It seems to be like saying "the telephone is not good enough, we need to return to telegraph."

Why can't we just send an email saying the same thing as a tweet, and the email recipient gets a "inbox from __" alert email?

Why can't the tweet be posted to FB's "what I'm doing" box, or why can't a blogger's blog be where the post is posted, with a service that sends an email to followers that tells them a new post is available or repeats the post?

This new tech is redundant and does not improve the old model; instead it hamstrings it by limiting the text. Twitter just doesn't make sense. Half the poeple who sign up for it right now are doing so because they want to see why all the compedy shows are mocking it.

In the end Twitter will become a national joke and then receed until it fails like so many other net companies. (Unless they change their business model and then they won't be Twitter so much anymore but facebook with less benefits.)

However there is a new tech better than twitter: it is called the telephone. You'll never have to type a teletype again to commuicate-- save time, leave tweets on people's phonemail... viola! I've heard this telephone thing saves time and trouble, why not try it?

[CantStopUsNow]

Couldn't have said it better myself. RIght on.

[pencilpusher]

I have been vaguely aware of Twitter for more than a year, but only recently wondered what it was all about. Your post cleared it up. If those "good tweets" are the best, I'm definitely going back to "vaguely aware". Just because you can, doesn't mean you should (better than the MSNBC line).

[MIMom]

Maybe you are young enough for Twitter, but you may be too old to quote TDS and TCR accurately.

[bekahpaige]

That definitely wasn't a gaffe on Colbert's part....

[AristophanesJones]

Age has little to do with it. I'm 23, most of my friends use Twitter, but I still refuse to indulge in its puerility.

[CantStopUsNow]

Im 25. I don't know anyone who uses Twitter. At least no one who will admit it. I've never even been to the website. It just sounds dumb. Like just the latest fad. And once members of congress started twittering or tweeting or whatever dumb name they thought was clever, that was it for me. The debate later this year will be if Twitter was just a dumb idea, or if old people ruined it. I say both.