Monday, June 15, 2009

What is Twitter to you?


Twitter to many people means many different things.

To me Twitter means chatting with "friends" and finding out bits of information along the way, but I am constantly having to re-evaluate how I feel about the whole thing.

I have had periods where it has been amazingly good fun but then times when I have not enjoyed it so much, like now, when I have started to take things personally if things are said as a joke and I did not think it was very funny,or offended if I saw someone that I follow and is a friend talking to people and not talking to me.
I guess here the saying comes in "familiarity breeds contempt"

I realise now that Twitter has not to be taken too personally, and in fact the moment you do you are almost doomed.

A lot of people have been commenting on "Twitter Jail" lately where you get booted off for too many tweets, some have made duplicate accounts so that they can get around  this problem,
 I admit I did think about doing the same, however decided against this after realising that Twitter is actually correct to kick us off for too many tweets, as conversations are not really what the Twitter idea was, more a sharing of information.

Secondly I realised that if I was allowed free reign I would like everything else in my life become addicted, and any addiction will ultimately become destructive.

When I first started to use Twitter, it was important to me to have as many followers as possible, however now I am in the situation of having quite a few, I find that it becomes quite difficult to follow what is being said anymore.

I have my favourites "Tweeters" and like to think that I have made some good friends on Twitter but over the next few day's I shall be cutting my follower levels in a hope that those left are people that I enjoy tweeting with and more to the point enjoy tweeting with me.
Which I believe is the whole idea.



Your turn, what does Twitter mean to you?

7 comments:

  1. Hi Mummy Bird :)

    I can so understand how you feel, 140 characters can be mis-written!

    Twitter to me has opened up a world of opportunities for my new business, am realising the power of it plus the excitement of learning so much from people I'd never be able to contact with. Have met some lovely people too....I can see many a Tweet up in the future being attend ;)

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  2. It must be a twitter habit - you encapsulated my thoughts concisely without rambling.
    It is difficult getting the balance between actually reading what people are tweeting and following many of the great people out there.

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  3. yes agree totally it was like a life line at first people seem to be not so interested now maybe the dark winter has now passed

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  4. Virtual societies are just as potent as real ones. Of course Twitter can be addictice, very enjoyable, very annoying, you can feel bitterly aggreived by non-attention or claustrophobic from too much. It's all there. I've experienced it all too. Some say its not healthy but it's just the way life works.

    I love Twitter cause it's instant society & new society on tap, with all the good and bad thrown in. Like everything the more you put into it the more you get out of it. Maybe in the future I might get bored with it but not now. It's by far the best of all social netwoking media, apart from the early magical days of 49£ of course.

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  5. Mummy Bird,

    I join twitter as a great resource for learning Photoshop and it has helped me a lot. It ended up being more though, and that surprised me. I really didn't think about making friends with 140 characters or less. Yet somehow it still happen. Do not let twitter get to you. If for some reason, you feel left out jump in and say hi get the person attention. I know as my people count grows it is harder and harder to keep up and I miss a lot of things. But your real friends are your friends no matter what. So say hello and go from there. :)

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  6. I think it's never a good idea to worry what other twitter users are doing or what is motivating them.

    I think different people use it in different ways. I personally like to follow a lot of people and have lots of people follow me - that's just my preference. I like to feel that there's a huge crowd all talking amongst themselves and I can just drop in at any time and pick up a conversation myself.

    That is just what works for me. I'll always answer people and talk to people but I could speak to someone one week and then not again for a month - but I'd hate to think that sone people would be annoyed at my behaviour.

    And another thing, I enjoy reading tweets. I read at least 30 for every one I reply to. And I often laugh at them, am interested in them and think about them. But I can't reply to everything as I don't have an opinion on everything or perhaps I need to think about them a bit more. So people will read your tweets far more than they actually talk to you. But doesn't mean they aren't interested.

    Rambling comment over!!

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  7. To me twitter is a playground and a library rolled into one. I recently told someone I only actually tweet about 10% of the time I am logged in to twitter, the rest of the time I am reading tweets, following links, looking up things I have never heard of, reading profiles and following those links. And of course one of my fav activities any where People watching ! Its easy to see I do not interact well, and compared to lots of twits hold back on info about me. For what its worth I do that in person too, to me twitter is the perfect social media for the not so social like me.

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