Thoughts on Twitter

I’ve been in the Twitter-verse quite a bit for the last few weeks trying to assess the value for me of the application.   I think I can draw some conclusions about it at this point.

– it’s a good way for me to keep in touch with the husband of my niece in NYC. He doesn’t use email (neither does she for that matter) but he is a strong Twitter user and here’s why.  He’s a photo artist and he captures random images in that fascinating city and posts them online using Instagram.  I love his art and getting his tweets is a simple way for me to participate in it and retweet with commentary.  This, I believe, is a perfect example of Twitter’s main strength, it’s ability to extend a message and add value at the same time.

– there’s a lot of noise, otherwise.  I follow over 200 people and that naturally creates a lot of tweet in my stream.   I actually peruse through the list because everyday I find some nugget of information I would otherwise have been unaware of.  That would be okay; my life would continue pretty much in the same way.   But each day some tweet catches my eye and stimulates a thought that allows me to learn something I didn’t know before.  This is good.

– I’m not addicted to it. There is value for me but there’s quite a bit of effort too.  I’m getting tired of some of the people I follow, finding that their messaging is too narrow, too within tight line of interest.  I suppose I wish they would show a bit of personality but then again, they may use Twitter for different reasons than me so I shouldn’t be harsh.  Still, I will continue to be judicious in who I follow and unfollow.

– it’s a great way to steer some attention to causes you support, whether they be charitable or artistic.  Basically, any cause that typically struggles to get a thin slice of society’s attention bandwidth benefits from even a single person tweeting about them, even if your following is rather small.  

That’s it for now.  I’ll probably write again about this app but it will l likely be in the context of how I utilize social media in general to promote my thoughts and views.