I’ve always known about Twitter. It’s been around for years, but you’d think it just came out this year by all the popularity it’s recently garnered. I was turned off by it. Tell people what I’m doing? That’s what I use Facebook for…why would I broadcast what I’m eating to a bunch of strangers? More importantly, why would I be interested in what all these other people are doing?
I was wrong. Or rather, I had the wrong idea. You can use Twitter on the basic “What are you doing?” level, but it really shines when you look past that. It acts as an aggregator of people, of news, and of interests. It’s a way for you to receive information that is very specialized and valuable.
Through tools such as WeFollow, Twibe, and TweetMondo, I was able to follow and get updates from people who are fellow Audio Engineers, Musicians, or Photographers, as well as follow people who live in my same neighboorhood. There are new tools popping up daily to aide in the search for valuable people to follow. And that’s what enriches the Twitter experience; the people you decide to follow. That’s what enriches life, too.
Following people is half the fun. For any creative person, the benefits of broadcasting your latest project to hundreds or thousands of people is extremely valuable. With URL shorteners like bit.ly it’s easy to insert a link in your tweet. That link may be something you were involved with, or it might be something you think people would be interested in. Throw in the Facebook Twitter App and your tweets get mirrored to all the people you know personally via Facebook. While you’re at it, use TweetDeck to manage Twitter instead of using their website.
Within the last week I’ve been amazed at the number of interesting people I’ve discovered and the new opportunities I see. As a result of all this Tweeting, I’ve also become more active in my following of blogs, having resurrected my latent use of Google Reader.
A lot of this re-examination of Twitter was thanks to a coversation I had with Molly Gross. Thanks, Molly!