My Twitter Experience and Some Twittequette

I'm pretty new to Twitter (@goldenm) and I don't spend a ton of time on it. But I felt compelled to check it out and see what the buzz is about.

Would there be value for a business person? For personal reasons? I was a skeptic, but enough people I know and respect were spending energy there, so I thought, perhaps, I was wrong.

Twitter is a microblogging site that allows people to post their thoughts while trying to do so using 140 characters or fewer. <--about the length of that sentence.

INTRO TO TWITTER

I actually enjoy popping in once or twice a day for a few minutes to see what people are talking about. I started "following" some friends and business assocaites I could find, and then added a couple strangers whose posts/replies to my friends were intriguing. Most of those "strangers" quickly followed me back.

Pretty soon, some new "strangers" started following me. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to follow them back or not. I didn't know if it mattered. Who are they? Why would I want to see their tweets?

Some of them seemed to post constantly and my screen would be completely full with just them. Of course, that is more likely when you only follow a few people. But there were a couple that I decided were not posting things that were terribly interesting to me or were blatently self-promoting. Not once, but repeatedly. Bye-bye.

Click on someone's name and a quick skim will tell you what they post about and if they are using Twitter as a sales mechansim.

VALUE OF TWITTER

Much to my surprise, in a couple weeks, I've found several benefits from my time on Twitter:

• very short intros to nuggets of information
  • great links
  • interesting news items
  • wise ponderings
• seeing what people I care about are up to
  • tips on how they cope with juggling
  • technologies they are exploring
  • observations they have
• reading "new people" and broadening my field of learning
• invaluable on emerging news

To the last point, when I couldn't find good, up to date (actual on-the-street) news about the fires in So Cal last week, of all places, the Orange County Register piped in a feed of all Tweets talking about the fires. I could read continuous feeds, and see pics, from people talking about the fires in my home town, very near my mom. This relieved my worries in a way nothing else did. In fact, some of the Twitterers were so interesting, I still follow them.

UNCLEAR ASPECTS

My only beef with the experience, and I will stay on it, were the challenges I had in figuring out some basics...how can I search for stuff, for instance.

Search: Even if you go to Twitter's Help and ask "How can I search twitter?" there is no clear answer. I must really be dork because I didn't notice the very subtle search link stashed at the bottom of the page. Search at search.twitter.com and some guidelines for searching are enormously helpful: http://search.twitter.com/operators

DM, RT, @, #, tinyurl, ... what do these things mean?

• DM is a direct message to a specific person (that remains private)

• RT is re-tweet (or posting to your followers something you read from other tweeple (seriously, that's what twitter users are called)

• @ is a reply to a specific person (not private)

• # preceeds a community chosen phrase that makes it easy to search for related posts. For instance #ocfire was the chosen phrase to capture the posts related to the fires near my mom's house
• tinyurl and similar services compress long URLs which is important when you have only 140 characters to state your point

To read more on Twitter, why and how, see this five-post series on the blog of Jennifer Laylock of Search Engine Guide.

WHOM TO FOLLOW, WHAT TO DO?

My post today was inspired by a (regular) blog post I read called Gurus on Twitter: Get a Freakin' Clue! by Jack Bastide. (Hat Tip to @ellenfweber who Tweeted the link).

I've read it is "bad" to have a big variance between your number of followers and those you follow. But I didn't necessarily understand why. Jack's article helped put this into perspective of the value of social media, and the comments on his post help as well.

In fact, Jack has great articles on his TweeterBlog and info on how to get started. Wish I'd found his blog on day one!

For me, I'm still Tweeting about. Enjoying meeting new people and soaking up at least one or two great new ideas a day. Now that I've read these articles (above), I'll get more involved in replying, too. I didn't know it wasn't rude on Twitter to "butt in" to a conversation. Thanks for clearing that up, Jennifer!

Comments

[Jack Bastide]

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for mentioning my blog. You seem to be understanding Twitter quite well

Now go follow me before I get pissed off ... (wink)

Jack Bastide

[Dianna Huff]

Michelle -- Great post. I am now following you -- @diannahuff

[Ellen Weber]

Thanks for carrying this conversation further, Michelle. And thanks also for the hat tip! Twitter is new to people like me also, and many who frequent it are new too.

Like you, I've found interesting people there, which gets me reading fine sites like this one, that I may have missed otherwise.

There are so many aspects of this exchange on twitter that will open new ways to use it even more effectively.

I found your hints helpful to wrap my own brain around what works well with the very busy schedule I keep.

My problem is that I enjoy so many interesting ideas far too much, and there is no shortage of insights flying around on Twitter. So I have to glance in and move on:-) Thanks for that reminder!

[Mary]

I thought it was only me who couldn't figure out all the features of Twitter. I, too, discovered that the Help pages don't really help. Thanks for your post.

[Kevin Sablan]

Thank you for using the efforts of the Register as an example of how Twitter can be "invaluable on emerging news."

I tried Twitter three times before I BEGAN to understand how useful, and powerful, it is. I remember being confused by the many community-born semantics, and the various tools and resources from found outside of the official Twitter site.

Your post is a nice primer that I'm sure many will find useful.

It looks like you've become pretty comfortable posting tweets via the web site itself. At this point you might want to toy with some third-party tools that might save you some time and/or effort. Here are two posts I just found that seem to be decent roundups of some of the more popular alternatives.

8 Extensions to Tweet your Firefox Browser ... http://cli.gs/PTR7Mn

Comparing Desktop Twitter Tools: TweetDeck, Twhirl, Spaz and Twitterific ... http://cli.gs/9m50r2

[Michelle Golden]

Thanks for all the great comments! I learn so much from you and that's what I love about twitter. Every time I read even a handful of tweets, I learn at least a cool thing or two. I do see how people get addicted and I fight that urge, frequently!!