For the past two years I have been an avid user of Twitter, I am sure I have gained more from my conversations than I have given, made many great contacts, lots of real life friends and learnt a lot. Outside of this network I have found that the mere mention of the word Twitter, let alone trying to explain what it has to offer and trying to get other engaged has evoked the word “twit” in the listeners mind. I see their eyes glaze over and the look that say’s “She needs to get a life”. it has been a case of “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”.
Not anymore it seems, with all the current media coverage of Twitter boy has that changed. Twitter is now three years old and it is the word of the moment, everywhere you turn it is being mentioned as the new *BIG* thing. The growth of Twitter users has been massive over the past few months it seems every politician, rock band, celebrity, TV show, magazine, newspaper…. all now have twitter accounts.
So is this good or bad?
This question has sparked a lot of discussion on Twitter with some users annoyed that Twitter is not being used “properly”. Seeing that most of us aren’t actually using Twitter in the way that it was originally perceived where uses left tweets in reply to the question “What are you doing?” I think the more the merrier. Twitter has developed into a communication tool, a community of users who share information, help each other and have many many conversations.
One of the things that is different with the new Twits is they tend to have hundreds of thousands of followers but only follow back a few people, this can lead to one way conversations within their twitter network, it just becomes an outlet for their tweets. It is understandable that they don’t follow everyone back when you have a look at how many followers some people have like @coldplay (489,914 followers/2670 following) , @theellenshow (Ellen DeGeneres 696,746 followers/17 following ) and @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher 791,101 followers/60 following ) have, they would just be flooded with incoming tweets. I think it all comes down to using a tool for your needs, some like @stephenfry (395,062 followers/55199), and @bobbyllew (20,240 followers/203 following) use it to have 2 way conversations while others like @coldplay simply use it as a way of passing information onto fans, and for celebrities like and @mrskutcher (Demi Moore following 68/followers469,894 ) that have so much false information reported about them it must be fantastic to have such an instant quick way of setting the record straight. I wonder as the celebrities and media get a handle on using twitter whether the celebrities will find the true power of twitter and be able to diminish the power of the Paparazzi? If they continue to post their own photo’s on services like twitpic and video on Qik then the media outlets can sidestep the Paparazzi and simply use those photographs.
I will have to end this article or it will never get published. As I have been writing it I have come up with a few more post that I want to write on things like, Why I use twitter, What I get from Twitter and Tips Tricks and Tools for Twitter. To conclude this post I can sum up with Twitter is a tool, use it as you want to, engage with others and don’t take it too seriously as after all you you only have 140 characters to use.
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