Cinco de Twitter
Some might wonder what I am doing home at midnight on Cinco de Mayo. Well … I’m blogging, that is your first clue …
I wanted to give my thoughts on Twitter, and why it may not make sense for an artist or small business owner to spend too much time using this technology (that is your second clue).
Keep in mind, this is just my opinion regarding my own uses.
I don’t find it helpful for my needs. There, I said it. I don’t think it has any unique functions. I think it could be a plugin for Facebook, but a major social media website? That is stretching things a bit.
I have definitely heard all the stories of how Twitter was useful. Some kid was freed from jail in Egypt - someone Twittered from the inside of a Mumbai Hotel during the hostage crisis - and there are numerous other examples. But I am not sure if Twitter actually provided a practical use in these instances, or did they just get a sweet PR plug? Did Twitter do something a normal text message wouldn’t have done?
Annnnd, how did someone Tweet from Egyptian prison in the first place? Shouldn’t the real story be about Akmed - the kind Egyptian prison guard who felt sorry for some mothers son - and let him have his cell phone in jail?
Would that kid have been freed from Egyptian prison without the cell phone? Did the Twitterers in Mumbai help end the crisis? I wonder - do people really use “Twitter search” to a degree that has any substantial pay off?
I have a lot of questions and no answers people.
I definitely believe that having a lot of friends in Twitter indicates absolutely nothing. As an experiment I loaded up my band’s Twitter account with nearly 800 friends hoping some of them would add us in kind. I got us about 275 friends at our peak. (approximately 34% followed along with my scheme). I then started posting all kinds of crazy things about our Myspace page to see if I would get a measurable increase in visits to our Myspace page.
I didn’t.
Apparently my new friends didn’t give a tw**t what I had to say. They were probably all inundated with hundreds of other friends engaged in the feverish act of shameless self-promotion. Which is all I think Twitter really does for anyone - enables shameless self-promotion. But is it effective? What is the ROI? hahaha - I can’t believe I said that! That is what skeptics say, apparently.
I have noticed that people who actually USE Twitter have very few friends that they actually FOLLOW. In my opinion, it is likely these so called Twitter friends are already in close connection with a given Twitterer… say IN REAL LIFE … or via a more practical medium such as Facebook.
It seems most of the recent news stories related to Twitter have absolutely nothing to do with the actual practicality of the service, and are merely sensationalist garbage and/or propaganda.
“Ashton Kutcher beats CNN to one million Twitter Friends. Courtney Love becomes the first person to get sued for something she said on Twitter.”
In defense of Twitter, I don’t have an iPhone and I can’t receive very many text messages because I am a broke underemployed bastard with a weak cell phone calling plan from a corporation that would sooner have me become their indentured servant (I tried but they weren’t hiring).
Perhaps that is where I am missing out. Perhaps if I updated my Twitter account every five minutes with information relevant to some event I were throwing it might provide some benefit.
What do you think? I know I have enabled a feature on this blog where you have to create a profile to sign in to leave a comment. I am looking for a good, practical way to fend off the spammers that are bludgeoning me with offers for free sex and free drugs … but on Twitter … what are your thoughts on Twitter? Perhaps you can think about it as you go about your daily routine … squeezing oranges for your breakfast treat … doing crunches to remain at the peak of fitness … selling kittens from a tray on 35th and Hawthorne …
I remain a skeptic …
