There are a lot of my friends who don’t see the point of twitter; they sign up for accounts, but they don’t start to follow anyone apart from the odd celebrity & maybe one friend who probably never even updates anyway. Oh, and me – cos I’m the one that nagged at them to come and join the fun in the first place!
What you have to understand about Twitter is that it’s not really just a series of meaningless updates. The thing I hear most often is “why would I care what so-and-so had for breakfast anyway?” – the funny thing is about this is you then get the very same people having conversations about diets, recipes, all time favourite breakfast cereals.. when they are talking about breakfast in person. The fact that my coworkers spend at least 5 minutes a day discussing what they had for dinner the night before proves that you do care about what your friends are eating! Twitter is a conversation too, you just have to join in.
If your friend has coco pops for breakfast then give them props for admitting to love a childish breakfast cereal, and admit you love it to! If they send a tweet saying that they’re having muesli then give them your opinion on the foul stuff, and commend them for being healthy. And that’s just breakfast! Conversations I’ve had on Twitter in the last few weeks include: my favourite mac/iPhone software, pets, cross stitch, Counting Crows (I actually had a mini convo with the lead singer of my fav band!), my wedding, men’s flaws, and my favourite tv shows!
Twitter is a place where you can ask for help, and you’ll get half a dozen answers; sometimes even from complete strangers just looking at the public timeline. You can help out your friends with their questions – I even helped Mat Horne with an iTunes question, go me! You can share funny links, interesting links, helpful links… you get the picture – it’s a great way to find fantastic gems on the web!
And all this is before you even add in the hundreds of twitter apps that are out there. There is just so much you can do with twitter, and so many applications that work with twitter.. You can share great photos, capturing brilliant moments & sharing them with your friends instantly. You can be a DJ, update your friends when you post a blog entry, send greetings cards, organise events.. and of course you can use it as a notebook – that’s my personal favourite, along with TwitPic ;-).
The point I’m trying to make is that Twitter is so much more than what you had for breakfast. It’s hard to explain why you should come and join in; only that you should. Twitter is a community, a place to discover new friends, a place to find out what’s new & hot on the web scene – and just an all round great place to be. If after you’ve read all this[2. Seriously, well done if you have read all this!] you’re still a bit sceptical, watch this video from Common Craft:
Coming next, my #followfriday suggestions, in a blog post.
Tags: geekiness, iphone, recommendations, twitnote, twitter
Hear! Hear! Long live Twitter! :o)