Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Monday, July 11, 2011

Twitter

I'm with Soph. I'm on Twitter, but still don't get it.

Been on there for ages, but don't really get the appeal or the point.

9 comments:

Pedro said...

Thats because there isn't any.

Jessica said...

I have an account, but I've never tweeted. I enjoy following a few feeds, but I do that via the email inbox.

Amy said...

Love. love, love Twitter.

It's all about who you follow I think - follow the right people for you and it all comes together - otherwise it is a big mess of shoutiness and talking to nobody.

I've made real friends on Twitter, and talked with authors and journalists and comedians.

Julie said...

Agreed.

I have an account, but I really can't justify spending more time online to use it. I already spend a couple of hours most days on blogs...

Maybe this is why I NEED an iphone.

Ben McLaughlin said...

Hmmm.

Maybe the key is having a phone with internet on it. Then I might care more and write more stuff on the go.

Because it's monday now, and I certainly have no interest in getting on to Twitter and scrolling back through to Saturday to see what the people I follow were eating at a cafe. It was dull news on Saturday, but today it's dull AND old news.

So what am I to do.

ALaird said...

Ben, Twitter is AWESOME! And really really useful.

At work it's so helpful for me. 9 times out of 10 it's now the first place where I'll get a heads up about some news story breaking. And from there it just becomes like a search engine for finding out more detail, contacts etc.

Also don't think about it in terms of JUST 140 characters. It's more about what that tweet sends you to. For example so many articles, blog posts, videos etc that I check out online I find out about via Twitter. For someone like you who writes a blog Twitter is like your advertising - you post a tweet with a hyperlink each time you write a blog article. So Twitter is more like a gathering place for links, information etc rather than the place where you get all your information (it's so much more than that, but it certainly does this)

And of course there's plenty of room for all the fun stuff too...

The key to getting into it is following a decent amount of people. The way I figure out who to follow is look at who other people I'm interested in follow. Go through who I follow for example and chances are there'll be some similar interests you can follow too.

The thing is you don't read every tweet. Whenever I log in I don't go back through every tweet. I scroll back for an hour or two's worth of tweets and then I just leave it open and scan the ones which pop up while I've got it open.

And you don't need a smart phone to use it - I use it all day long and don't have one.

Ok Twitter sales pitch over. I'm heading back to twitter...and I might tweet a link to this discussion:)

Ben McLaughlin said...

Good sales pitch indeed! Interesting. well, I'm happy that I can just have it open without having to scroll back thru a million boring tweets. Also pleased I don't have to have a smart phone.

But I don't like the advertising idea much. To be honest I don't like when people tweet a link to every blog post. It feels a bit too PLEASE READ ME I NEED YOU SO MUCH FOLLOW ME I BEG YOU PLEASE VALIDATE ME.

And not in a good way.

But I'll consider what you've said.

ALaird said...

I agree - bit too much self promotion! Still useful in other ways. And yep - don't get bogged down in reading every last tweet:)

Ben McLaughlin said...

I'm giving it another burl. Following some more people and tweeting more. I'll see how it goes.