People can usually be divided into 3 camps when it comes to twitter.
- “What is that?”
- “I don’t get it, is this all there is?”
- “I love it.”
A little while back I decided to add twitter to my other social networks on a 1 month trial basis. I’m still something of a neophyte but I’m quickly moving from bullet #2 to bullet #3. Part of its draw is the simplicity. No flash, no fancy languages or code. Just enter a few sentences and your done. The other part of the draw is how it can be scaled for nearly any use that you can think of.
But what’s the point?
The point varies based on your overall needs and purpose. At its core twitter is like a phone party line in text. It allows you to be part of a larger conversation and contribute and respond as you desire. With this in mind, you can keep a close group of friends, you can market your product, business or blog or you can align yourself with like minded professionals for topical discussion. A simply way to get started is to describe yourself so that others can find you based on similar interests. Head on over to wefollow.com and get listed. While there, you can also look for other people who might share similar topics.
One of the other benefits of twitter to the general public is that it serves as a real-time search engine. Since Google indexes (searches and shows results) of twitter conversations, you are able to see what people are saying about anything right now. From a marketing standpoint this is beneficial to monitor advertising and PR. It also allows two way conversation between a big corporation and simple folk like you and I. If you find that you appreciate searching twitter there are a few tools to help.
- tweetscan is a simple web based twitter search.
- twazzup another web based twitter search with a little more flair.
- Sideline this search tool is installed on your computer and can handle many different searches and many options within those searches. it can also be set to refresh every second. Probably too much for the average user, but nice for a larger organization.
If you find that you are twittering more than you expected you might want to consider a desktop application. This means that you don’t have to login to twitter.com every time you want to post or read your tweets. The program sits on your pc and allows you do do everything from your desktop. All of these clients also have a basic search feature build in. A few of the more popular ones include:
- tweetdeck just got an overhaul and sports quite a few features.
- Twirl an nice looking simple program that was #1 before the tweetdeck upgrade.
- Seismic this program is the next version of twirl, many new features.
The truth is, twitter might not be for you. But it can be used as a great tool for many. A mobile taco restaurant in L.A. uses twitter to let people know where they will be next. A professor used it to keep the students involved in a real-time conversation during lectures. That’s why “what’s the point?” is a difficult question to answer. My point may not be your point. In fact, you might be the person who discovers the next point. Are there any other great examples of people finding creative uses of twitter?