Comments on: ignore twitter, microblogging at your own peril

By: John Ettorre

John Ettorre — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:39:23 +0000

Sorry, Cheezman, you know I highly respect your opinion, but I’m not buying this about Twitter (which I must admit I’ve always thought was appropriately named, because it seemed to be of interest most among twits with microscopic attention spans). I’m not at all against social networking. I use Linkedin extensively, and find it close to essential. But Twitter just seems too much like teenagers IMing for the adult professional in me. I’m quite sure I’m not alone in that. Yes, blogging (at least good blogging) is hard, but then anything really worth doing is too. When done well over time, it shows determination, ability to sustain ideas and substance & depth. The idea of growing your business through Twitter seems more like something from a standup comedian’s opening monologue. We’ll see if events prove me wrong.

By: Michael Specht

Michael Specht — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:36:47 +0000

Joel good to see you have finally joined the darkside. :-)

Good post and there are many examples coming from users of Twitter where the tool adds value to business. I have seen examples of customer support, recruitment, job seeking advice, management advice, industry information, in fact I rely less on RSS and more on Twitter to discover new interesting things. One of the biggest values of Twitter is the relationship building, ie networking, and we all know the value of this.

But yes there is a lot of “garbage” out there, which makes the signal to noise ratio difficult. Things are starting to change with some new tools being released.

Firstly, new users might want to head over to http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com and find users of similar interests and start to follow them. Twitter is no fun by yourself. Another new tool http://tweetmeme.com/ is trying to track what is being “discussed”.

By: Kris Rzepkowski

Kris Rzepkowski — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:31:26 +0000

Chrisr, You and Cheez are far more seasoned bloggers than I, but I don’t know if you really can “do the same thing with a regular blog”. I didn’t get what was up with Twitter as a useful platform for learning, until recently. But, I found this very post because I follow Joel on Twitter. The best tweeters are filling my brain with far more industry knowledge on a daily basis than my RSS feeds could ever try to. Follow Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean.

If Joel’s arguments on ease-of-use come to fruition and you could hook up a Twitter feed to the top “non-bloggers” in any field, then that would be something. Maybe I’m onto something here. Getting a corporate blog program is a challenge – but a Twitter program, maybe not so daunting?

By: Susan

Susan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:12:23 +0000

Joel – one important change I think we’ll need to see for Twitter to become even more pervasive – flat rate unlimited texting rates or, even better – free!

By: Susan

Susan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:55:30 +0000

Great post Joel – I haven’t twittered yet but have been following closely and am ready to take the dive. As for the future potential – its huge! Just think what will happen when twittering and GPS collide! Beyond individuals and community connections, I believe that this will be the open door for companies to begin seeing value. Imagine the potential as companies begin to leverage the relationships they’ve been building through other social networking connections like Facebook pages, niche Ning sites, fan sites and the like – they have been doing this, right!!

By: Chrisr

Chrisr — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:36:34 +0000

I can see how valuable it is to bloggers and web geeks. But I dont think its going to catch on with corporations anytime soon. I mean who has the time to twitter every hour about what they are doing? Its a very personal tool. I use Facebook and their “Name is” feature is basically a microblog which i update a few times a day. But its not a big part of my strategy. Yes, I am a naysayer. To me, you can do the same thing with a regular blog.

By: Jason Alba

Jason Alba — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:22:21 +0000

It helps to be connected to interesting people. I’ve found out about impromptu lunch meetings that were open through Twitter (so, get connected to the local crowd), as well as industry news/ideas (because of following people like Bill Vick — so, follow your industry/profession crowd), as well as social networking stuff (so, follow the leaders in the social space).

You don’t have to follow all of these groups, and the noise starts to go up the more you connect with, but you are right, it’s a fascinating environment and I’ve been able to forge relationships on Twitter that I couldn’t do any other way.