It’s humbling to blog. You want to share your thoughts and ideas, so you do, but what sometimes happens, in my case anyway, is that eventually either experience or someone with more experience comes along, shows you the error of your ways, and suddenly you are faced with a public record of a half-baked idea. So it is with my Bloodhound Twitter posts, which now read like a high school romance.
Oh! I had such a mad crush on Twitter. It was so much fun to be around, but when Twitter experienced sudden ginormous growth, my Twitter gated community lost power, literally, and then it got looted, literally, and I had to lock the gates on my darkened community to keep out the riff-raff.
With the huge growth of Twitter came a lot of “followers”, and perhaps it’s semantics, but I don’t want to follow people. I wanted to converse, discuss, have that big family table experience, but without the family dynamics. I was looking at a Twitter stream full of a lot of followers, a few leaders I didn’t want to follow, and damn, that’s when it hit me: Twitter- I’m just not that into you.
Twitter, I still want to be friends. You rock for the fastest way to get news, but I’m finding that here in Dayton Ohio, I don’t need news that quickly, it doesn’t add to my life in any meaningful way. I still adore my local Twitterpals, and I’m becoming their go-to real estate pro. We tweet-up when we can, so I do check into Twitter for that reason.
Twitter, I like you, but not in that way, ya know? I just don’t feel the excitement any more. We’ve settled into a routine- an understanding- if you will. I don’t need to tweet, and you don’t miss me when I’m gone.
Via email, Greg Swann recently declared Twitter a cesspit of groupthink. Hey! That’s not nice, and that’s not true. Well, okay, it’s half true- the groupthink part is on point. In fact, one of the ways you can use Twitter is to gauge groupthink. You can follow Twitter discussion threads through Summize, which is now owned by Twitter, and quickly find out which way the wind blows through the Twitterverse; that’s kinda useful, right?
Regardless of what I think about Twitter, I’m guessing that the majority of people currently, and always will use Twitter to catch up on the latest in fast breaking gossip, but let’s be fair, do vast amounts of chattering gossip make Twitter a cesspit?
Todd says:
I follow Teri Lusser’s Twitter updates, they’re fun, kinda manic, a lot of “I doing this now! No wait, now this! Wazzup my Twitter people!?!??”
Thanks for posting the video, made me laugh. And don’t listen to Mr. Swan, he is an admitted member of the Anti-Twitterati.
July 21, 2008 — 3:14 pm
Brian Brady says:
Twitter is useful to connect with people. I’ve met a bunch of local folks on Twitter and mostly surf into their pages to see what they’ve been doing rather than join in the conversation.
I’m finding the Padres conversations are more interesting than the RE conversations, though.
July 21, 2008 — 4:02 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Todd follows me? Do I follow Todd?
Ignoring your manic comment, focusing on the fun. Glad you liked the video- pure camp!
>And don’t listen to Mr. Swan,
You’re not the first to suggest that. 🙂
>he is an admitted member of the Anti-Twitterati.
Perhaps it’s hard to tweet in Latin? 😉
July 21, 2008 — 4:08 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Teri,
The main thing that I use twitter for is to follow the writing of some of the bloggers who I enjoy. People like BawldGuy, Darren Rowse (problogger.net), Paul Kedrosky (www.paul.kedrosky.com), and to keep in touch with some of the other agents who I’ve enjoyed interacting with.
I’ve also learned a lot about selling real estate through a couple of Realtors who I’ve been following (and I’ve learned a lot about Bawldguy’s starbucks habit!
Tom
July 21, 2008 — 5:12 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
i tweet in haiku
if larger words must be used
say it in a blog
July 21, 2008 — 5:50 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Brian & Tom-
I do enjoy connecting with people on Twitter, but it doesn’t hold the promise for me that it once did.
Brian, I’m curious how your twitter channels are working?
July 21, 2008 — 6:52 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Cheryl-
one hundred forty
is not much to work with
a blog is needed
July 21, 2008 — 7:05 pm
Heather Rankin says:
Teri – you’ve dropped me off in twitter land??? no.o…o…..
Actually I am learning stuff, and I enjoy the links to good sites the most. Bawldguy and Darrin are great to give information. For that, I’ll stay.
July 21, 2008 — 11:25 pm
Brad Coy says:
There are few better tools for me to connect with locals in my sphere efficiently. Now that has been *my* experience.
A few days before we did the twitter presentation at Unchained, the platform started to fail. Shortly after that, all we saw were fail whale sightings. Because of this I have spent very little time using it since. I have always felt that this is a micro-communication channel that will be converted or absorbed into something bigger and better. Based on the success of these channels I’m sure this will happen.
There is so much idle chit chat and noise going on it can be unbearable if one is trying to *follow* anything. My methods of use are still the same. Log-in, engage and leave – “The Pub”.
>I’m finding the Padres conversations are more interesting than the RE conversations, though.
By far. The conversations I enjoy are typically around city events and/or Tech stuff. These are my people, my friends, my clients, and even my family.
July 21, 2008 — 11:59 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
I’m beginning to think that creating multiple twitter accounts might be a good solution. For example, I’d have a real estate account, for following RE people; a tech account; a local community account; a poetry/art account; and so on.
I follow people in all those spheres, but when you toss all the incoming tweets from all those different spheres into one pot, the resulting mess is not pretty.
Anyone have a different solution?
Epiphany: How you view twitter depends in some part on whether you are more interested in “broadcasting” what you have to say, or “following” what others have to say.
July 22, 2008 — 4:29 am
Teri Lussier says:
Heather-
No! I didn’t leave Twitter, but we are just friends now. 😀
July 22, 2008 — 6:00 am
Teri Lussier says:
Howdy Brad-
>The conversations I enjoy are typically around city events and/or Tech stuff. These are my people, my friends, my clients, and even my family.
Therein lies the problem for me. ::dramatic sigh:: It’s so hard to be ahead my time…
July 22, 2008 — 6:08 am
Teri Lussier says:
Cheryl-
I tried multiple Twitter accounts. Rather odd for me.
I don’t want to follow or broadcast, I’d like to talk. 140 characters doesn’t lend itself to talk, but lends it self very well to chattering. I debated between Telephone Hour and Abba Dabba Honeymoon… 😀
July 22, 2008 — 6:13 am
Brian Brady says:
@Teri-Channels aren’t working- an unimplemented idea
@CJ- Twaiku is brilliance
@BradCoy- Your BART has wifi tweet turned into a 4 hour convo, one Sat night on Twitter, with the Tech Crunch dude.
July 22, 2008 — 9:51 am
Sue says:
Well thats a clip from an old movie…to think I loved it at one time! I have not twittered and I think I’m ok with that after reading this post. I gather its hard to fit everything you want to say in sections and for those of you who didn’t see this post, there is a tool called Tinypaste. Check it out here.. http://agentgenius.com/?p=2281 …its said to be particularly helpful for twitterers.
July 22, 2008 — 7:52 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Hi Sue-
Thanks for the link.
Don’t let my grousing prevent you from Twittering- it’s tons o’ fun- just like in the video. 🙂
July 22, 2008 — 8:19 pm