Twitter Has Become Insanely Valuable
For some reason today there has been a lot of talk about Twitter and whether it is or isn’t relevant. Unfortunately the negative has floated to the top and Scott Karp’s explanation of why Twitter isn’t valuable is currently on the top of Techmeme. It all started with an observation by Jeremiah Owang about how Twitter is starting to drive traffic and become a flashpoint for good stories. Scott’s post is accurate, when taken in the heat of the moment, Twitter isn’t the most “high yield” activity out there. There are better ways to spend your time than looking at what everyone is up to on Twitter.
But that’s the beauty. I can do a quick check of what my Twitter friends are up to and not feel bad if I’m missing Tweets. I have a great Twitter crowd. I get a lot of cool information and I get to connect with them on a level that goes beyond their blog or general “web presence”. Interesting tech people are using Twitter and I get to hear about their kids, their day, their thoughts on a topic and a bunch of other things that I think are interesting because I think people are interesting. Twitter is a much more personalized version of the web for me. I’ve gotten beers and gone to events with people based only on what I’ve seen on Twitter. That’s incredibly valuable to me as a person.
So Twitter has always been important to me. Then came things like Tweet Scan. Tweet Scan is the most valuable market research I can do as an evangelist. Curious what people are saying about Adobe? Right there. What are people saying about rich Internet applications? Done and done. I can even find people that are talking about me so I can respond to them. Twitter is little snippets of what real people are thinking. That helps me connect with people that are interesting and doing a lot of different things. If you measure Twitter in terms of short term value then you miss the mark. The web is all about connections and Twitter streamlines that process. I love being able to see what my followers are doing because they’re real people and they have interesting lives. That’s why I love Twitter.
[tags]Twitter, personal[/tags]
Posted in Rich Internet Applications
December 12th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Hey man great post!
December 12th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Good post Ryan. Twitter is something different. I use it through my IM client. And unlike my p2p IM chats, my twits get indexed by google. :-0 I guess I better behave myself
December 12th, 2007 at 10:10 am
I really think it’s all about your “crowd” that you keep on Twitter. In a way I want to create a big LCD panel in my mom’s kitchen because she’ll get the answer to the question she always asks me – “What have you been up to”. That’s the thing with Twitter, the social contract is so loose that it is a good way to stay involved with a group of “friends”.
It’s great because the people using Twitter are ALOT like me personally so there is a lot of overlap in our knowledge but when there is a hole someone who “kind of” knows you can really help you out.
Kurt
December 12th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
[...] Ryan Stewart had the most useful post I read on the whole thing, largely because he clued me into Tweetscan. I love search tools that yield rich results but are slightly off the beaten path. I regularly search the blogosphere for many topics before I’ll go into regular Google search because the latter has gotten so spammy. I’m not sure I’m ready to proclaim as Ryan has that Twitter is “insanely valuable.” He uses it as a way to stay in touch on a personal level with more people. Twitter seems to have disintermediated the water cooler in that role for Ryan. I just don’t know that I can view that as “insanely valuable”, although it is certainly fun. [...]
February 21st, 2008 at 9:14 am
I noticed lately that you added that small box with “What I Am Doing On Twitter”. If is not a big secret, could you share with us how you added it on your blog?
Because I am not much of a coder and a friend from work was asking me if is possible to add something like this on a blog. And now I see is possible.
Thanks