The non-utility of twitter | Mark Horstman: “Twitter, I Don’t Like It”
For me, the problem isn’t so much attention, it’s SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). There’s just too much noise in Twitter to make out any signal. And that’s why it’s not worth following while you work.
Mark Horstman says “Twitter, I don’t like it”
I’ve got to say that Mark Horstman at Manager Tools makes a point that I’ve learned surprisingly quickly. I am a member of twitter, identi.ca, and army.twit.tv. I have to say, though, that I generally use it as email. I do send updates of what I’m doing and done as I feel the need. (These updates sometimes also go to FaceBook and LinkedIn.) However, I don’t watch twitter all day long. I start Twhirl at the end of the day or when I need a break at work to see if anyone messaged anything cool during the day or if anyone responded to one of my messages.
I am also disappointed in its utility. The fact is that there are too many people saying “just walked my dog” or “ate breakfast” or “am going to sleep” to make it useful. These pedestrian messages are noise. I don’t learn anything from knowing that you ate breakfast.
Does it have to be this way?
Of course it doesn’t have to be this way: if people would generally post only useful or informative stuff (signal), then Twitter would be much better. Even then, though, I don’t see the utility of having the information in real-time.
I should say at this point that very few people I know are on Twitter. I basically go there just to see what’s out there, not to interact with my friends. I think it probably is a great tool for interacting with friends–especially ones that are nearby–so the real-time notification is more useful.
I have to say that I have good hopes for Yammer. I know I’ve posted things that are useful for those working at Motorola to Yammer’s Motorola group; of course, I’m biased. It seems that part of the problem is that Twitter is public: you start with a massive group of people and then try to find people that share your interests. What would be better is if you started your own group of people around some smaller conversation and then grew it to a larger size. I’m seriously thinking of doing this over at my CircuitDesign web site. To that extent, laconi.ca and OpenMicroBlogger seem to be uniquely suited.
The utility of Twitter
The utility of twitter/laconi.ca/openmicroblogger that make them better than email or mailing lists is that you are able to subscribe to specific people. If I post to twitter, not everyone gets that update–only people that want it. Contrast that with a mailing list, where if someone posts, everyone gets the update. Given that, I think it still has a unique value. I just don’t think it’s worth tracking in real-time.
I also think that twitter search is useful in finding topic posts that might interest you. Note that you can get an RSS feed for these searches that you can then read at your leisure.
For a long time – I didn’t get Twitter or find the value in it either. The first thing you come to when navigating the tool is the “..out walking the dog/ate breakfast” posts that you mentioned in your post. It also doesn’t help, at least from my perspective, to have videos like http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o telling me what Twitter is. If this is all Twitter is, I’m not interested. I’ve had enough of those chit-chat applications that aren’t really sharing useful information and require a lot of work just to find anything meaningful.
However, about 2 months ago, I decided to give Twitter another try, dig through the crap and see if anyone was using the tool for real business or information sharing purposes. After a lot of digging over the past 2 months, I’ve come up with a follow list that is a real gold mine of information for me.
I work for Motorola based out of Vancouver Canada. The interests I have and looked for in others on Twitter, are , Social Media ,Mobile Applications, Web Design and gaming. After a few searches I found a handful of people that matched this criteria, in this order:
1) Sharing meaningful info
No “out walking the dog/ate breakfast†posts – or at least a very small percentage. Just business/current events/info sharing through links or to other Twitter users
2) lived in the region
I wanted to know what was going on around Vancouver, events, workshops, meetups etc. that apply to my interests.
3) posted regularly
People who are updating on Twitter regularly are sharing up-to-the-minute activities going on. I dropped people that haven’t posted in over 2 weeks and regularly update the list as people drop off. .
4) Were noted Entrepreneurs in Social Media
I follow the twitter founders, the Publishing owner of O’Reilly, and several web development company owners/entrepreneurs who share what is going on in their business or share product release info
From that list I looked at who they were following, figuring they would have a similar approach as me given their quality of posts. Today I follow about 100 twitter users. (Seasoned Twitter users will tell you this is a good limit to set before information overload sets in.) and feel as though I am on the pulse of what is going on – especially within the Social Media business. I’ve already attended several events that I heard from on Twitter – finding them on the internet would have been possible had I really been looking. But that takes a lot of effort – and on Twitter, the information comes to me.
Suggest you take another look!
– Troy
Troy Tinnes
6 Nov 08 at 1:49 pm