It's Not Just Black and White

Twitter as a Personal Tool and a Resource

A friend and I have an on-going debate… what’s the point of Twitter? He is constantly telling me that there is no reason to use Twitter, it is worthless, and it is a waste of time… I told him I’m going to write a blog entry and prove to him there’s a point to using Twitter.

I joined twitter in May of 2008… I tweeted for one or two weeks and that was it. I used Facebook status updates a whole lot more and didn’t really see too much to Twitter. I came back to Twitter within the last year and realized how much more is out there. Twitter has grown from a personal status update to a whole library of data. If you follow some of the right people you can get more articles and blog entries than you could imagine.

A few examples:

Guy Kawasaki – Guy posts all sorts of content. Most of the articles he posts are ones that he has taken, done a short review of on his blog, and linked to the full article. The articles range from latest tech news to weird things people have done. His tweets aren’t personal by any means, but they give you a whole bunch of news and information in one place.

Lisa Barone – Lisa does a great job of mixing business and personal life on Twitter. Her tweets are hilarious to read, yet most of the time bring up very good points. She often shares interesting links to other articles and her own opinions as she writes for Outspoken Media.

Beebow – Lauren spends her days writing blogs for her company and sharing tons of information on Search Engine Optimization. Her tweets range from other SEO people to follow to articles and blog entries.

A day has not gone by in the last six or seven months where I have not found at least two articles from Twitter worth reading. Instead of having to Google a specific subject to find the information someone else starts up a discussion about it. Different subjects you might not have thought of can come up just by watching what people tweet. The more time I’ve spent on Twitter the more I’ve learned about social media, search engine optimization, and the benefits of using both to market a website.

Yes, Twitter can be used as a personal tool, but don’t turn away just because people are tweeting about what they ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Twitter can worth your time if you use it the right way.

Screen Cap From Twitter - 7:30 PM - October 21, 2009

On October 15th , the US watched as a family feared that one of their own was “floating above Colorado”, as they believed their youngest boy had untied a UFO type balloon and was inside it as it floated away.  The story was more than one trending topic on twitter and was on all of the news stations. There was even a boyintheballoon twitter account was created before the balloon landed. Yet it was still hard to believe that this young boy was floating above Colorado.

People were right not to believe. By that night, the young boy had spilled the beans on Larry King Live that it was all for show. Within four days CNN broke the news that the authorities had reason to believe the incident was a hoax. Yet, a week later, Balloon Boy is still a trending topic on Twitter, is still in the news, and is the background of so many jokes that are out there.

Thanks to social media the Henne family got what they were looking for, attention. As a former reality TV family from Wife Swap, the Henne family was looking for another reality show. Was this the kind of reality show they wanted? In the past week they’ve been on a variety of TV shows, had plenty of national coverage, and have been one of the major topics in social media. You can’t really ask for more attention than that.

The exact details of what happened that day are known only by the members of the Henne family, and we may never know the full truth of what happened. Yet, do we even care? Using the tools that are at our fingertips daily, people around the country were able to come to their own conclusions of what happened and share them with thousands of people. The Henne family definitely got America’s attention.

So why are we continuing to talk about it almost a week later? Why am I writing this blog about it? Because it’s fascinating how a story out of a town in Colorado can spread across the country within minutes. Speculation beginning immediately after the story broke. When Michael Jackson passed away in June, it was a trending topic on Twitter for weeks. In fact a good portion of people found out on Twitter or Facebook. The day before that no one said much about Michael Jackson. Imagine what would have happened if we had Twitter during the OJ Simpson trial.

A few weeks ago, Jay Leno took Twitter to the Senior Citizens Home. They tried to explain to the senior citizens what Twitter is. In the last few weeks I’ve had to explain Twitter to a variety of people; some have understood it, some look at me dumbfounded.

I’ve used everything from “it’s a way to connect with people, to it’s a micro blog, to it’s a whole new form of communication”. For those who don’t get it, I get told to pick up a phone. I have to laugh because my main form of communication with friends is with a phone, but through text messaging. With texting you’re limited to 160 characters per text. Twitter took it one step further and dropped it down to 140 characters.

In all of my ways of trying to explain twitter to friends, family, and others, I have never found the best way to explain it without having to go into lots of detail. Saying it’s a micro blog, sometimes gets into “what is a blog”, saying it’s a form of communication leads into “who are you communicating with”.

I was trying to think of an easy way to explain Twitter to those who just don’t get it without having to go into detail, and still make it worth their time.

In exactly 140 characters, here’s how I would describe it:

A form of interaction with friends, family, etc. used to keep them up to date with inner workings of your daily life, business, or interests

How would you explain Twitter in 140 characters or less? Leave a comment and let me know.

In the last six months Twitter has gone from a small social network to one of the largest social networks out there. I first signed up for Twitter over a year ago. At the time, I didn’t understand the point of it, and walked away for about 10 months.

I soon discovered that the gymnastics community had grown on Twitter and you could follow gymnasts such as Nadia, Dominique, Carly, and Nastia. I was hooked again, it was an instant connection back into the world of gymnastics. One thing lead to another and I discovered a whole world of social media, other sports, photography, and local businesses on Twitter. From that point on, Twitter went from just a way of keeping up with news, to a whole new way of learning new things and meeting new people.

Twitter makes it so easy to find your comfort zone. Adding hash tags to the end of a Tweet, focusing on a single topic, or just looking at those tweeting in your area makes it so easy to find people to talk to. People are on Twitter at all hours of the day, tweeting from all around the world, and talking about so many different topics.

Back in the day when a group of fellow gymnastics webmasters and I would stay up all night waiting for results from events to come in, we’d start up a chat room on AIM and hash out our opinions of the commentary. As the gymnasts are competing in London at the worlds this week, that conversation was missing on AIM… It has now moved to Twitter. Tweets from USA Gymnastics, Inside Gymnastics, and International Gymnast were Re-Tweeted (RT) by fans, other gymnasts, and Olympic committees. When the FIG’s website went down throughout the day, we could rely on someone on Twitter to post the results.

Twitter reminds me of a poem that was written 10 years ago by an anonymous person (back when AIM was THE way to communicate):

We sit and we type, and we stare at our screens
We all have to wonder, what this possibly means.

With our mouse we roam, through the rooms in a maze
Looking for something or someone, as we with in a daze.

We chat with each other, we type all our woes
Small groups we do form, and gang up on our foes.

We wait for somebody, to type out our name.
We want recognition, but it is always the same.

We give kisses and hugs, and sometimes flirt.
In PM’s we chat deeply, and reveal why we hurt.

We do form friendships – but – how, we don’t know
But some of these friendships, will flourish and grow.

Why is it on screen that we can be so bold
Telling our secrets, that have never been told.

Why is it we share the thought in our mind
With those we can’t see, as though we were blind.

The answer is simple, it is as clear as a bell.
We all have our problems, and need someone to tell.

We can’t tell real people, but tell someone we must,
So we turn to the ‘puter, and to those we can trust.

Even though it is crazy, the truth still remains
They are Friends Without Faces, and odd little names.

The ability to have conversations with others through computers has been around for a long time… but Twitter opens up more doors to meet even more people and find information even faster.