Over on Greg Sandow’s blog, he’s talking about going viral. I’ve been half-heartedly experimenting with Twitter since last year, and I’ll have to say that I’m still not convinced. I can easily see the potential here, and I know that it’s already working for some people in certain niches. And although I consider myself a fast-follower (well, probably because I tend to be a fast-follower…) I realize that none of this happens without a significant amount of effort. The time spent establishing a Twitter network and figuring out how to use it has to come from somewhere. And since the work days are full to overflowing, guess what… yet another piece of business that spills over into the rest of what’s left of Life. Is it worth it?
Don’t mean to whine (even though I am…), for all of this is terribly exciting. But I’m not sure that tweeting for my company isn’t shouting into the wilderness. For sure, with any luck, when the millennial generation moves into the heart of the opera demographic, they’ll bring all of this 21st-century networking with them. But for now, I’m less convinced.
Yet I’m still out here cyber-kicking. The blog turns 5 years old this year. And I’m committed to sticking with the Twitter experiment at least throughout this coming season. But I firmly believe that for any communication to work, the originator must know her audience. And in this case, I’m not sure I do. But perhaps I’ll only find the answer through doing.
Find me here: http://twitter.com/kimpwitman
You are most definitely not shouting into the wilderness. Keep up the great work, Kim!
Greg Sandow is “going” viral? Some might argue that he already is…
Twitter is great for those of us who don’t always time to read an entire blog entry but still want to know what’s shakin’.
You may be interested in this article on the Millennial Generation: FLYP: Meet the Millennials.
I just don’t get the appeal of Twitter. It’s short little bursts of info I find either not particularly interesting, or too little info on an interesting topic, so frustrating. Nothing personal on yours, I was following my nephew’s during a recent trip abroad and had the same reaction hardly worth my time clicking on the link. But then again, I never got the appeal of IM, either, just found it annoying and interrupting chains of though when they popped up on my computer, so I shut them all off. Needless to say, I’m the boomer generation…
Well, I’m boomer, too, so maybe I’ve finally hit my techno saturation point.
I did have one success with Twitter this week – it was pretty crazy, tho. I tweeted asking if anyone could put me in touch with an iPhone app developer. Got a positive answer, but the crazy part is that the tweet came from a co-worker on the 3rd floor in my own organization.
I’m seeing 3 strata of tweets – the first (as you mention) is a tiring succession of updates on what the user is doing (having lunch, going to work, whatever); the second is a press release/headline from an organization; and the third (the only kind I really care about, and the rarest) is provocative, intriguing and out of the ordinary.
There are plenty of FB status updates in the first category, but because FB allows the user to “see less of” certain friends, it’s easier to manage the information flow. The beauty and liability of Twitter is that all tweets are equal.