Why I love and hate Twitter

Twitter is a great tool.  I use it constantly, although not as much as many.  If you want to post clear, concise messages to a group of followers, Twitter excels.  The same if you want those people to get them on their mobile device (if they choose to).  Coordinate your projects, coordinate your evening plans, coordinate your wardrobe.  That’s what Twitter is all about.  Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is an excellent means of asynchronous communication at a many-to-many relationship and I love it for that purpose.

And now to the downside of Twitter, at least for me.

Noise.

I don’t just mean noise on the public timeline.  I use Snitter, Twhirl or TweetDeck for my tweeting.  That limits my noise to tolerable levels.  I follow people who I know and those I’ve met via Twitter.  I started following individuals who seem to speak on different topics, including Internet Marketers.  Several of them.  And at times they have useful information that helps with SEO or SERP, Marketing techniques and product ideas.  But lately, not only have their been a lot of scams and “impersonations” on Twitter, but, dare I say it, copious amounts of commercialization.

It’s like using Tivo to watch commercials and skip the entertainment.  Spam about products; physical or informational, it doesn’t matter.  Spam, spam, spam.

Twitter is much like email.  It’s asynchronous and good for a non-participatory communications tool.  It’s not made to have conversations, even via Direct Messages.  Though useful, it’s kludgy and prone to exploit.

Will I stop using Twitter?  No, I love it.  I’ll just manage my followers.  If I get this much spam from people I follow, imagine what the PUBLIC timeline looks like.

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Tagged as: Twitter