Jan 18 2008
What Makes Twitter So Valuable?
Twitter is one of those things that I CAN see the value in it but, candidly, I’m still having a bit of difficulty extracting that value. You see I’m new to Twitter and while I don’t “tweet” a lot at the moment, I am lurking and learning with the hope and expectation that at some point I’ll be as productive as others — like James Governor for instance. Last week I was explaining my problem to Susan Getgood and she told me that my problem was normal and that I shouldn’t be discouraged. You see, Susan believes that the value of Twitter starts to really become apparent once you approach the 120/150 range of following/followers.
Laura Fitton wrote a great post on twitter where she too reaffirmed Susan’s point:
How does Twitter shift from idiotic to amazing? It takes a village - a critical mass of interesting people - to read and write to. When my brain started to connect with the brains (and hearts) of others, it got really, REALLY cool for me. You may be looking for like minds, or you may want to be totally shaken up by new ideas. Both work. One day I suddenly realized this was, for me, tribe-finding. For arguably the first time in my life I didn’t feel as weird and different.
Everyone connects to a different array of tweets and tweeters, so there aren’t discrete villages per se. But, the degrees of separation and connection create layers around each individual that hint at a very sketchy (and Twitter-specific) “social map.” (Often highly removed from who you actually know).
I know I’m not alone in this — I’ve heard countless times “I tried it but I just didn’t get it” or conversely “its the single greatest social network.” I You can follow me on twitter here, perhaps someday soon Twitter will be my village too.
I’m really very interested in your thoughts: What makes Twitter so valuable for you?
5 Responses to “What Makes Twitter So Valuable?”
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Followed.
For me Twitter is both stream of communication and discussion and a source of news.
That said, I do have to ignore it for stretches to get “real work” done.
Right now I have almost 800 followers (wow!) and following about 1,000. Lots of information and I know I miss a lot. However some of the discussions, in 140 char or less, have been truly thought provoking!
I pondered the very same questions at length — check my archives !
I don’t have nearly the number of followers that Tris and Laura have, nor do I spend as much time there. I look at it like a river of interesting conversation, dialogue, information among people of like mind. I dip in pretty much every day, briefly, and sometimes I have more time and actually go swimming
At first, the 140 character limit frustrated me, but now I appreciate it, as I think it is what makes Twitter work for so many of us, where Forums and Message Boards often don’t.
In a forum, you have to be there everyday, and read everything in order to really be a member of the club. Miss a day, you miss the plot.
With Twitter though it is just impossible to miss that much. And because everyone else is dipping out and in just like you, all you have to do is ask. Someone is bound to explain.
Mike, I agree with Susan that there is a critical mass of following/followers before Twitter becomes useful. For me, it was about 30-50 of each.
I was actually having this conversation last week (on Twitter) and pointed a few folks at a post I did early last year where I speculated that Twitter wasn’t actually useful. How wrong I was.
By the time I came across to the US for Office 2.0 (where we met, BTW), it was a critical tool for me - I was able to build on already established relationships that I had fostered, understand people’s motivations and know what they were up to, all thanks to Twitter.
For me it’s a virtual water cooler, source of news and touch point in my online and offline life.
I have so. many. answers. to this question. I promise to ping you each time I finish a post on one of them, OK? Thanks for the link, and great seeing you again in Boston recently.
I think I am starting to get it. there is a lot of white noise BUT also there are interesting and useful snip its and links flying around and good commentary. This is often valuable stuff that would end up on the edit room floor before getting to a blog post AND it’s highly concentrated. It was good to get some of the live tweets from Davos for example from Loic.
I am ambivalent about it but I am thinking I would now miss it if it was removed from the landscape