Seeing as the whole world has gone Twitter mad, with blogs abound about how it’s revolutionised everyone’s lives; national newspapers frothing over it and selling it to the masses, as well as long-term users now proclaiming patronisingly “I told you so”, I thought I’d put my oar in.
As with any social network there are those that just blatantly want to collect as many contacts as possible (just who does have the most contacts? Answers on a postcard please, whoops, sorry answers via @wearebluesky).
These über-contact collectors are best ignored. Delete their requests to join them and make sure they aren’t following you.
Then there are those that have a “sort of” connection. These are the interesting ones as you never know who they are contacted to, and where it may lead. However, what I found was that after accepting a vast numbers of these I just couldn’t keep up with the Tweets.
After having a spring clean I now follow around 50 people, although this is by no means fixed, whereas there are about 60 people that I allow to follow me.
And all this brings me nicely round to how relevant Twitter can be. Yesterday morning (25 February) I sent the following Tweet: “Anyone know if Xing.com is useful?” No-one actually got back to me (slackers!), but approximately 12 hours later Pelin Ayan, the marketing manager of Xing Turkey, put me down as a contact. She’s didn’t answer my question, but I’m now taking a bit more interest in Xing.
On the other hand, last week the editor of an online business site (I’m not going to name him) decided he was no longer going to take emails or phone calls from PR people pitching stories. He’ll only do it via Twitter. This means I’m now following him, but he’s not following me. I can’t even direct message him, therefore how do I pitch to him?
He now has around 500 people following him which, surely, is counter-productive?
And because he sends so many inane Tweets, and seems to thinks he’s being a revolutionary when all he’s doing is fuelling the journalist:PR “rivalry”, he’s going to be deleted.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I used to have a similar policy regarding the number of tweeple I felt I was able to follow and stuck, for a long time, at around 60. I’ve found that since I changed my expectations and – crucially – my software, I am able to cope with a much busier twitter feed.
My expectations changed when I realised that it’s not necessary to read every tweet that flows through your stream. It really is OK to just ‘listen in’ when you have the time. It’s easy to get seduced into the idea that you might miss out on something vital if you don’t read everything, but in reality you’re only likely to miss on things that a nice-to-know, not need-to-know. (Just think of all the interesting stuff that’s being said by the other few million people that you don’t follow…)
Finding the software that suits your use of Twitter and lifestyle helps a lot too. I use Tweetdeck on my desktop Macs and Tweetie on my iPhone. Both allow me to quickly and easily keep an eye on my tweetstream at a time that suits me – on the bus home, for example.
Getting comfortable with Twitter has made a big difference to the quality and reach of my professional network.