Jeffrey Levy commented on this blog in 2008 that his description of Twitter was a source of filtered, purified water out of a raging river.
I instantly smiled at the metaphor and began attributing him in my digital marketing courses. I tell my students that I compare LinkedIn to the Chamber of Commerce, Facebook to the cocktail party, Pinterest to the digital scrapbook, Tumblr to the photo collage, and Twitter to the river.
If you know the timezones of people following you and possess experience to know what questions inspire people to respond, you might get lucky.
I would not expect anyone to notice I stopped tweeting. @ariherzog
— Lin (@Lin_Dolin) December 26, 2012
@ariherzog The very nature of Twitter makes all users, even the social media all stars, ephemeral.
— Justin Whitaker (@justinmwhitaker) December 26, 2012
No, @ariherzogI am sorry to say I know no one will miss me or even notice my absence. May be quite different for you tho
— Mireille 005 (@Mireille005) December 26, 2012
@ariherzog No not me
— johncarson (@johncarson) December 26, 2012
Justin’s response caused me to pause.
Four years ago, that question would have elicited 3-4 times as many responses. But today, considering 1) the shelf life of a tweet is about 3 hours and 2) most people follow hundreds or thousands of people (Mireille follows 384, Lin follows 693, Justin follows 2,107, and John follows 2,613), you’re lucky if a tweet gets a response at all.
If your Twitter broadcast frequency is 50 or more times a day and you already have scores of followers, such as @CNN, you have nothing to worry about. But the moment @CNN stops tweeting, or drastically reduces its frequency, you may ask questions but you’ll quickly see other tweets in your river — and the river will keep flowing.
Lin, Mireille, Justin, and John replied to me because my tweet is what they saw in their rivers at a moment in time. They probably didn’t filter or purify me. They saw my tweet and decided to reply. My tweet could have been anyone’s tweet and their replies could have been anyone’s reply.
As 2012 turns into 2013, I find myself tweeting less. I’m slowly developing an e-book on my Twitter evolution over the years. I want to tell my story as much as I’m sure you want to read it.
About Ari Herzog
I think it is very interesting how the usefulness of Twitter has changed. It once was a great tool before it gained so much mass appeal. It used to be very personal – and now is much more noisy.
So what now? What is my purpose for Twitter? I use it to search what people are broadcasting, much like I used to use Technorati for in blogging 5 years ago. I use Twitter to share things I publish, and things I find that are useful, much like I used to use Delicious to share my favorite bookmarks 5 years ago. And I use Twitter to send quick messages, much like I did email 5 years ago. While tools have changed, my needs are still the same as 5 years ago. And while I do think that could be interesting, what is most interesting is that my purpose for using a tool may be completely different than yours – and both of us are using it correctly.
While your reasons for using a tool may be correct for you, would you not agree you may also be using it incorrectly? For instance, instruction manuals come with chainsaws and humidifers for a reason; and they are as much tools as Twitter is one.
Sure Ari. I could be using it wrong. So could you. What’s your point? And where is this Twitter instruction manual you speak of? Unlike a chainsaw, there is no definitive manual on how use Twitter, at least not one from Twitter.
My *point* is to clarify your earlier comment that Twitter is noisier today than it was in the past. How you and I tweeted in 2009 may or may not be the same as how we tweet in 2013; but the convention of tweeting by the masses since has forced us to change how we connect to other people. Agreed?
And, there is an official Twitter manual.
Absolutely Ari. How we connect is way different than it was. What worked before doesn’t know. My apologies if my agreement didn’t come through loud and clear on the first comment.
And that manual you referred to is no explanation of how or what to tweet. Sure – it offers a few points. But it’s not descriptive enough to help anyone use Twitter in a useful way. It’s why there’s so much need for consultants like you and I to work with clients to find their voice and navigate the stream.
I really like how you worded your comment. It is very true that we all use “our tools” for our own purposes and while we might use the same tools they won’t be used the same way. Much like when you don’t have a hammer you might grab a big wrench and use that in place of your hammer, you still will get the same end result just using a different tool.
Over the years, I’ve felt as if it’s become important for me to ‘spam’ on Twitter, in order for it to get across at least a few people and elicit a response or two. I think I joined in 2009 and back then, it wasn’t a particularly tough job to get a few replies and get your message across to your followers. Now, as a business owner, you have to send the same message at least a few times so that it can be seen by some of your followers. This is why a lot of twitter accounts have started spamming – which is essentially sending out the same tweet repeatedly by putting it on schedule. Like you, Ari, I’ve also reduced the amount of time I spend on Twitter.
Perhaps you should change how you use the tool, Kevin? If you need to reach multiple people, might you get the same traction by ensuring everyone who wants to see it does see it without you automating the same message three times?
In other words, there are other tools out there.
If you never get retweets then no.
No one would miss your absense from twitter.
However if you post and get retweets and traffic then people are reading your tweets. Keep the good stuff coming.
What’s the purpose of twitter?
The same purpose as the birds that wake me up every morning tweeting outside my window.
We are so we tweet.
If you don’t live in Florida or somewhere else good then I guess you wouldn’t understand.
I seriously doubt anyone would care if I stopped tweeting. I think I would be happier if it went away. It is good for 2 things (for me).
1) connecting to people – both those I continue to have a relationship deal with and new people
2) getting support for huge business that have in general forgotten how to give even the most basic customer support. I find it crazy that some large businesses actually provide decent support over twitter while failing to have other decent options (web based support tickets, web based IM with live agents…). I think the companies are foolish to use Twitter which isn’t very suited to doing this but while they do it is a use of Twitter.
I understand the easy of connecting on Twitter. But I think if Twitter died other, better options (blogs, RSS, blog comments, even Google+ [in some instances] are better) would be used more and I would be better off. But while people chose to use Twitter to connect easily – I’ll use it.
I actually use Twitter while I don’t use most other “social sites” (such as facebook…) so it is decent, it is just barely on the edge of worth doing versus dropping continuum, for me.
The huge use of Twitter with foolishly obfuscated urls as defacto RSS feeds is totally annoying.
I’m sure I would not be missed.
I’m like others in that I use it to find information (I’ve found many an interesting article while scanning my Twitter Feed that I may have missed otherwise) and to get info out from my website. Interesting thought that you would send the same thing several times. I HAVE done that via scheduling, but also, can schedule numerous DIFFERENT things that will still maybe bring traffic back to my site.
That is my primary reason for using Twitter. Would my business end if Twitter ended. Certainly not.
But I do like what Jacko said –” We Are, So We Tweet.” LOVE THAT!
Twitter can be an exhausting way to promote your business, that is if you do not do it the smart way. I know because I have learned that through experience.
I’ve learned that you cannot keep up with tons of tweets everyday and you also do not need to tweet every hour, every day. You just need to target the right people to follow and hopefully follow you, then tweet important updates on things that they need to know about you and your business.