A friend and I have an on-going debate… what’s the point of Twitter? He is constantly telling me that there is no reason to use Twitter, it is worthless, and it is a waste of time… I told him I’m going to write a blog entry and prove to him there’s a point to using Twitter.
I joined twitter in May of 2008… I tweeted for one or two weeks and that was it. I used Facebook status updates a whole lot more and didn’t really see too much to Twitter. I came back to Twitter within the last year and realized how much more is out there. Twitter has grown from a personal status update to a whole library of data. If you follow some of the right people you can get more articles and blog entries than you could imagine.
A few examples:
Guy Kawasaki – Guy posts all sorts of content. Most of the articles he posts are ones that he has taken, done a short review of on his blog, and linked to the full article. The articles range from latest tech news to weird things people have done. His tweets aren’t personal by any means, but they give you a whole bunch of news and information in one place.
Lisa Barone – Lisa does a great job of mixing business and personal life on Twitter. Her tweets are hilarious to read, yet most of the time bring up very good points. She often shares interesting links to other articles and her own opinions as she writes for Outspoken Media.
Beebow – Lauren spends her days writing blogs for her company and sharing tons of information on Search Engine Optimization. Her tweets range from other SEO people to follow to articles and blog entries.
A day has not gone by in the last six or seven months where I have not found at least two articles from Twitter worth reading. Instead of having to Google a specific subject to find the information someone else starts up a discussion about it. Different subjects you might not have thought of can come up just by watching what people tweet. The more time I’ve spent on Twitter the more I’ve learned about social media, search engine optimization, and the benefits of using both to market a website.
Yes, Twitter can be used as a personal tool, but don’t turn away just because people are tweeting about what they ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Twitter can worth your time if you use it the right way.
Good points. However, 99% of the people out there are not using it for these purposes… I can only read so many — “My cat just puked and my dog ate it” before I deem it as a waste of my time. I do agree that for the reasons you talk about above, it has potential to be good. However, if you follow the people above on their blog, there is no need to bother with Twitter… no?
… and I am stubborn. Guilty as charged.