My name is Sarah, and I have a Twitter problem.
I actually think Twitter is freaking awesome, and love it and love using it – to the point where sometimes I have to say to myself, “Step away from the Twitter.” It’s almost a default for me – email, Twitter, web.
I can think of a few dozen of examples of how Twitter has connected me to people and information I never would have known about if I hadn’t been signed on, and I haven’t been using it that long, either. I can remember when I first signed up and had NO IDEA what to do with it. The whole “What are you doing?” question gave me the chuckles: “I’m watching the market recap, and drinking an import!” Heh. What are YOU doing, Twitter?
Holy crapdamnhell, Twitter is doing a lot. I prefer Twitter to Facebook because while Facebook is an enclosure, Twitter is a platform. In Facebook, you communicate through Facebook. Facebook is the destination and the confinement: the conduits are all Facebook, and while you can link to other stuff, most of the time, you’re following links to other parts of Facebook. You don’t have to leave Facebook, either. It’s all in there – and they want you to stay put. You don’t need anything other than Facebook. Do not look away from the Facebook. Facebook is all you need. There is nothing other than Facebook.
Sorry, what was I saying?
With Twitter, the platform encourages you to leave and come back – if you want to. There are links to other sites to read, discussions about those links, and conversations that can get larger or smaller, or move off Twitter entirely. Twitter is the connection between people without the confinement of Facebook. Thus, I love it. I like the option of expansion and freedom. I get antsy at the idea of not having expandable memory slots, even if I don’t use them. Don’t fence me in. I get crabby.
This is not to say that Twitter is perfect. Sometimes the things I learn about or hear about on Twitter are so interesting, I can’t focus on what I actually have to do. It’s very, very easy for Twitter to make me feel overwhelmed. There’s so much to think about, as Courtney Milan said to me, I run out of time for the things I have to accomplish in my real life. So much information is broadcast on Twitter, I don’t have time for it all, and have to not only bookmark things for later but then remember to go back and read them. But so much of what I find is useful, and would have remained undiscovered otherwise. Actually, thanks to Twitter, I found out about the Firefox plugin Read It Later, as part of a discussion about what to do when there’s too much excellent information and not enough time in the day.
Chances are, though, I don’t use Twitter entirely correctly. I don’t auto follow. I will not follow more people than I can actually keep track of. I see Twitter users who are following 100, 200, a few hundred thousand people, and I cannot do that. There’s no way. I get confused when I follow too many people, and some of the folks I follow tweet once a week or only in the morning, so my follow list is a mix of low and high traffic Tweeters. I do read the Tweets from people who I don’t follow using the web interface at twitter.com, but it’s the difference between reading a blog sporadically and subscribing to its feed. Sometimes prefer to catch up in digest form, rather than have my “Friends” column updating with 15+ tweets every 3 minutes. I can’t keep up with that many words at a time.
There are one-way tweetstreams that I adore – there’s one for NJ Family magazine that posts about activities all over New Jersey for different aged children. On a Saturday morning, that tweetstream is a goddam goldmine. There’s another that Colleen Lindsay just introduced me to, Blazed and Confused, which tweets line from Harlequin Blazes, and the hilarious quotient is muy muy grande.
I’m kind of fascinated by how people use Twitter, and the ways in which my use of Twitter is so different from other people’s. Personally, Twitter is a tool for me to communicate as much as it is a tool for me to learn from others. I need to be able to listen and I need to be able to talk and respond. Twitter needs to be useful for me as a channel of information and conduit for connection, and if I follow too many people, I can’t keep track. It becomes a blur of information, and I don’t get much of anything out of it because it’s so much I block it all out. Twitter is incredibly powerful for me, but not if it’s a blur of chatter that I have to force myself to mine for significance.
I love Kirk Biglione‘s analogy that Twitter is like the best cocktail party ever, with people you’re dying to meet and talk to – it’s totally apt. But I don’t particularly like big cocktail parties. I don’t like crowds. I get exhausted by small talk. More often than not, I’m the one in the corner with a drink having a very happy full-on genuine conversation with 1-2 people, doing my damnedest not to count how many people are in the room. Whether a crowd is actual or virtual, a big crowd gives me twitchypants and I want to enjoy Twitter, much like I’d like to enjoy the best cocktail party ever.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to people. I do try to reply whenever someone speaks to me. I love having conversations with new people, even if I can’t sign on to follow them all. The simplicity of Twitter and the ease with which I can enter or listen and learn from a conversation is fan-freaking-tabulous, but not if there’s so much coming at me at once that I can’t keep it all straight.
I received an email this weekend from someone who mentioned that she had to un-follow an author on Twitter whose stream was nothing but book promotion, without any invitation or even opportunity to reply except with admiration. I can understand finding that bothersome – I get plenty of advertising thrown at me. I don’t need to subscribe to more. I know there are a ton of authors still trying to figure out how to use Twitter for promotional use without seeming like they’re nothing but promo (hey, have you seen Booksquare University Tweet Camp?) but also without losing six years of their life responding to everyone on Twitter. Figuring out how to make Twitter work for you can be a challenge, and I’m still negotiating with it.
How do you use Twitter? Do you like it? What more do you wish you could do?
Oh, that was “respectful.” Not a new made-up Interwebs word. *smack*
Teddypig you were the 4th person I searched for when I got twitter and was disappointed that you weren’t on there! You would add so much to MANY conversations!
Authors , especially small press authors, if you’re not on twitter you’re nuts. I’ve bought and read several books I otherwise would never have heard of and enjoyed most of them.
I have figured out it’s best to read thru the daily blogs before signing into twitter because if I don’t, I never will get around to reading all the blogs on my fave list.
Solely on 140 characters, maybe not. But try a new author based on a steady stream of for-the-most-part witty and amusing interaction? I have. Enjoyed the book, too. Got a few more on my list when my budget loosens up, too.
Also, when I innocently mentioned that I’d never read a Lisa Kleypas, nearly half my follow list jumped up and screamed, “WHAT?!?!” I got the idea I might be missing something.
So just because we Twitter and Facebook and text means we don’t read or write? Wow. So I guess I imagined reading those 3 books I read this weekend in addition to the tweeting I did.
I don’t think it’s an either/or situation. I’ve been addicted to the internet for quite a few years now with the blogs that I read regularly, the email I check constantly, and, yes, the tweeting I now do. Yet I still find time to read a book every now and then.
I think to disdain a new technology or a new way of interacting with various people you’d never meet otherwise just because you think it’s bringing about the ruination of the English language is a bit ridiculous. If people can’t spell it’s not because of Twitter or texting. If people don’t read it’s because they don’t want to.
And I agree with Victoria Dahl, there are quite a few books I wouldn’t have even picked up or be thinking about checking out if it wasn’t for promotion on Twitter.
Speaking of spelling, the spam word was didnt74 and I did it wrong at first because I automatically included the apostrophe.
Oh, I love the Twitter. Love, love, love the Twitter.
I have fun there. For me, while promo is a small aspect of it (I link when I do a new excerpt or blog post, and will occasionally tweet review quotes) it’s mostly about meeting people. Having just moved to a new area I’ve made a couple of local friends through Twitter. I get to chat with faraway pals there. It’s a great way to touch base with people.
Like Victoria Dahl, I know for a fact Twitter has sold books for me; someone likes things I’ve said, and buys my work. Just like I do when I see a writer saying something smart or interesting or funny (I’m not saying I’m necessarily smart, interesting, or funny, just that I’m lucky enough to have attracted some readers). Again, that’s not why I’m there, but it’s a plus.
I don’t autofollow either, and a large percentage of people I follow are very rare tweeters. But I do also check my @ replies regularly and try to respond to all of them. I like chatting with people. I like the casualness of it; I can drop in, chat for a minute, and drop out, and it’s okay. It suits my schedule and not the other way around.
I just love it. There’s almost always something interesting happening there.
Man, I really did sound over the top and insulting. Thanks for calling me on it, Victoria. My apologies.
Now, MelB, I will begin to assimilate you into the machine. *grin* I’m secretly communicating in 140 character bursts.
Well, you are well aware that I share your twitter problem. Okay, maybe not quite as extensive a problem, but I am right there with you.
As to the 140 character thing, it’s actually helpful for my writing. We were discussing – on #writechat, I think – the fact that because Twitter forces you to be extremely compact in your communication, you learn to convey a lot in a small amount of text. That is a valuable skill for a writer. I find myself thinking of Twitter as dialogue. You need to convey a lot of information in a small amount of text, but with some punch.
And, actually, I don’t think I maul the English language that much when I’m twittering. Well, okay. Maybe I do. lol.
PS – spamword is body76. I don’t know if that is serial-killer-scary or hot erotica mmm-yum. *ponders*
I flat-out adore Twitter. It takes minimal time, unless you choose to devote a lot to it, and my YA that’s due out in Sept has received more pre-pub buzz than any of my 14 previously published books…and all that buzz can be traced to Twitter. In addition, I love trading non sequiturs with people and just seeing the nutty things people post. Personal favorites: “Husband listening to Nancy Grace. Her Cheese-grater voice makes me want to climb on her chest and shove dirty socks in her mouth.”
I just wrote a giant essay on twitter, but I didn’t enter the spam word correctly, and now it’s gone. Clearly, I’m not getting the 140 char. message. So now I’m going to try to make the same points, but in less space.
1. I love twitter because it forces me to be less wordy. I get lots of good information from authors, bloggers, friends, and another social outlet.
2. But, one twitter account can’t serve all purposes. I can’t keep up with my friends, favorite authors, and work contacts on the same feed. Signal-to-noise ratio is horrible.
3. Solutions for too-many-tweets to read problem:
– Sarah, Jane L, and the charming and innocent Ms. Dahl have all been rerouted to a folder in my Google Reader account labeled “people who tweet too much” and I read them once a day. They have a lot of company in that folder. It reads like the best watercooler conversation from a book publishing/author office building ever. But if there are over 700 tweets in that folder I delete them all unread. I care about who likes cake and who doesn’t, and if Neil Gaiman found good sushi in his current port of call, but I won’t spend that much time finding out.
– Work twitter account. My god, some good information gets posted by law librarians on twitter. That feed is way less engaging than the others, but when I followed work contacts on my personal account, they followed me back. Had a bad effect on my honesty and writing style to my friends.
– Personal twitter account contains only people who tweet very rarely or who I actually interact with.
4. Side effects of this style of info management:
– I feel kind of like I’m stalking my favorite authors.
– I’m less likely to actually make contact with them (honestly, though, I probably wouldn’t direct message them or reply to most posts anyway).
– I don’t follow my work account as closely as my private account – might be missing super-current developments.
Other twitter thoughts:
– Privacy is important but overrated. Signal-to-noise ratio eliminates all but the most dedicated stalkers. Still, I think it’s important to keep your online and offline identities seperate (especially if you’re a british spy).
– Twitter is a great surrogate office for people with careers that are solitary. Makes it great for novelists.
Well, that’s not shorter at all, but it’s way better organized. I’m sure I’ll be back with more thoughts.
Thank you for that comment! People who tweet too much. Imo, there had better be a darn good reason why anyone would tweet more than once a day. Seriously, two or three in a row one or two times and it’s tempting to hit Don’t Follow. I like your idea of separate accounts—altho am I the only one who’s searching for my copy of The Golden Notebook? I’m getting terribly divided. Yeah, I actually am going to disagree with myself: one twitter is all my brain can handle!
Yeah, I’m tweeting about #moonfruit a lot (but it’s still not a trending topic? WTFBBQ?).
Honestly, all the people in my “people who tweet too much” folder do tweet the right amount for them and the way they’re using twitter, just far, far too often for me to follow in my normal feed! I think Sarah comes up with a new awesome link about every five minutes, and Jane from Dear Author has conversations about legal issues in the publishing industry that are super interesting to me (since that’s a subject I follow professionally and for fun), and most of the authors tweet about fun life stuff and parts of the writing process that are extremely interesting to read – like you’re getting a backstage pass to the writing process.
But yeah, if I tried to tweet more than 3 times a day, I’d be talking a lot about sandwiches. And I don’t find that twitter (in my circle) is that good for conversations – I think web forums are a lot more suited to that for most people.
Jocelyn, I absolutely love the idea that i have to be kept in a separate and secure folder. LMAO I think it is just the place for me.
I thought you might be amused. 🙂
I’m quite fond of Twitter, though I don’t post all that often and mostly follow RL friends and a few of my favorite bloggers (including SBTB of course). Travel is my main thing, and I found Twitter fantastic for posting quick updates that captured a hint of an experience while backpacking around SE Asia for the past two months, when I wouldn’t have had time for a full blog post. My budding photographer friend, meanwhile, has turned her Twitter account into an excellent professional tool, networking with tons of other photographers, providing updates on her growing studio, linking to her work & articles on camera techniques, etc.
Like any other networking site, people can use Twitter in different ways that they find useful or enjoyable to them. I’m always rather baffled by those who are so sneeringly dismissive of Twitter. I think it’s foolish to deride a certain form of technology just because it’s currently “too popular” or you don’t see how you personally could use it. Not everyone has to or even should jump on the bandwagon, but that doesn’t mean those who have joined are silly for doing so.
Keep those 140 characters bursts coming, Victoria. *grins* I have been reading all these posts and I have to admit that I am learning a lot.
I love Twitter, probably a little too much. Way more than Facebook. It’s such a time suck and I know it’s a problem when my teens tease me about my addiction. It can be dangerous though. I like to think of it as the office Christmas party that never ends. You have to be careful of what you say there are certain things that could come back to bite you in the morning.
I do Tweet, and there are some things I especially enjoy, like #firstlinemonday.
I’m selective about who I follow, and who follows me. I seem to have picked up a pack of dachshunds who have their own accounts. I hate to say this, but SNOBB and Good_Dog_Denka are more interesting than some of the people tweeting out there.
Okay, now I understand Facebook. Didn’t get it when friends started switching over from myspace, but it must have been as twitter is now for me. I thought it was too busy, too much stuff to learn. Thanks for the help in understanding. I try to limit myself to 3-4 tweets a day, but I must admit—I check more often
I have drunk the twitter kool-aid and lived to tell the tale! To me it’s like a ‘Random Thoughts’ forum topic on steroids. I talk to online friends around the world, follow a few authors and science & entertainment twitters, and keep up with what’s going on locally sports- and events-wise. I started off thinking nobody can really follow more than 50 people and keep up—and I currently follow 300. In the last 10 or 11 months I’ve had to drop some follows because they’re too prolific, mostly with blip.fm and other music tweets which I hate, but I’ve gotten really good at scanning some tweets that don’t need a lot of thought and paying close attention to my friends’ tweets. Most days I do read my entire timeline from the time I left to the time I returned, usually 25-30 pages, but I still miss the days when you could follow all @replies because I found several new friends that way. I don’t much care who follows me anymore, except for the obvious pr0nbots, because as long as you don’t have to read their spam why care?
I do have to say twitter probably costs me a fair amount of money because I do production typing and you can’t get any incentive payments if you spend all your work time talking to friends. But I did that using forums before I started twitter so I think it’s more my addictive personality than twitter’s fault. And I completely agree about Facebook; I show up once or twice a month, click on the Ignore button about 20 times, read the dozen or so postings that actually mean something to me, and that’s that.
And thanks for a wonderful read!
I don’t have anything to do with Twitter or Facebook, but I find that I LOVE fake Twitter and fake Facebook. Two of my favorite authors- Kelley Armstrong and T. A. Pratt- created Twitter streams (am I saying that right?) for their characters, and I think the little peeks into their fictional characters’ lives are awesome. And the fake Facebook pages that they create over on Slate are really funny too.
I love twitter although I certainly don’t use it correctly. I actually follow Sarah, though it is difficult because of the amount of tweets. I think that’s the problem with auto-following people- it is very easy to become overwhelmed and tweets can become disjointed, I think there needs to be a rhythm in order for the whole thing to make sense. So, aside from some fun people to follow (i.e. the prime minister and Martha Stewart) mine is just close friends and we use twitter completely incorrectly. I use it as a communication tool with about three friends mainly, it’s like a continuous IM chat really but the word limit means you must be concise and it’s actually a lot of fun. I resisted it for quite a long time, but I do see the appeal. It’s not as self-absorbed as it sounds, it’s like a giant conversation, a leaping point, an interesting tool.
I’m usually really slow with new technology. I finally got on Twitter because the opera training program I’m involved with started a Twitter account, and I figured I shouldn’t be behind hand. What I love about it is how easy it is to update multiple places—my Facebook page and my own website. My latest 2 tweets display, which is a fun way to keep my website very dynamic. I mostly tweet about the writing process, talks with writer friends, sometimes plays and operas I’ve seen. I don’t try to keep up with everything, just check every so often (probably a bit too often 🙂 and jump into the conversation if the topic seems right. It’s also great for keeping up with news headlines and clicking onto the full articles.
My husband is organising an intervention for me because of my addiction to Bejewelled Blitz on facebook.
I’m too scared to twitter, I’d be absolutely hooked on it.
I use my personal Twitter for stupid status updates like “Had a dream that I lost my glasses. Everything was fuzzy.” But I am also using Twitter in an alternate reality game that the library I work at is doing in cooperation with the Summer Reading program this year. So for game purposes, we are giving away clues, hints, etc., basically anything that helps facilitate game play.
I’m the owner of the Blazednconfused twitter, and first of all I want to thank you guys for following me and spreading the word. I first got into twitter because I’d heard about it about a year and a half ago, and couldn’t understand why someone would just want to “facebook status” without all the other stuff that’s included with facebook. I tried to find someone that was using it differently, or creatively and couldn’t really find anyone. So I decided to blast lines from the Harlequin Blazes I was reading, because I would sometimes e-mail them to a couple of my friends that liked reading the books but rarely buy, and often wanted to borrow them from me.
I don’t have a phone that makes it easy to read tweets, so i’ll never reply or retweet, and I’m a bad follower. Twitter just doesn’t really fit into my daily tech situation, but I’m enjoying putting it out there!
Sarah, as you can see, I’ve been Twitterized. Thanks a bunch, I am placing about 88.6% of the blame on our conversation at B&N. Don’t worry, the remaining 11.4% of the blame is split between me and Nicole, who zapped me after she joined twitter.
I find that I follow some very specific genres of tweeters and they fall into three categories, with a fourth that is simply miscellaneous:
1. Romance
2. Art (mostly urban & up-and-comers)
3. Crafting
4. Misc.
I’m sure I don’t use twitter in what people would term a “correct” manner, but I certainly enjoy it. And I don’t give a crap about who is following me. I am more interested in hearing about what other people are doing than updating folks on my life. I like hearing about what writers are doing, what releases are coming up, what artists are working on, new toy releases (yes, I’m an urban vinyl junkie), etc. I’m ususally replying to others’ tweets. I may tweet once or twice a day. More if I’m bored at work.
While I’m registered on FB, I don’t go there that often. I find all of the ads, quizzes and other stuff and absolute annoyance and FB is harder to use since one must navigate around all of that crap. I’ve probably pissed a lot of my friends off, but I am just not that interested. The hubster thinks FB was a fad that faded and that Twitter will be “over” as quickly as FB. I’m not as convinced.
Since I’m working part time now, I’ve found that my time is more valuable because I seem to have more to do (you know business is bad when one can say that). I don’t have all of the people I follow linked to my mobile device, but I do get to a computer about once a day and read at least three pages of back tweets to see what’s been going on.
I love it. Damn you, Sarah. Maybe I should raise your blame percentage.
I adore Twitter. I believe it was invented just for me, me, ME. I’m a flat-out, Type A++++++ extrovert, and the stress of a career where I’m alone in a room in my house day after day after day has me nearly chucking it all to go work at freaking McDonalds on a regular basis. AND to make matters worse, I’m a chronic insomniac who hasn’t slept much in the past 25 or so years. But TWITTER – ah, I love me some Twitter. Any time, day or night, there is somebody to chat with (I consider it my water cooler conversation, more than the cocktail party, fewer obnoxious drunks) about old movies, music, writing, reading, books, current news, or anything else I’m in the mood for. I have no idea how many people follow me because Tweetdeck doesnt’ say and frankly I don’t care. It’s not a promotional tool for me, though I did mention my release day stuff because, hey, book release days are the most exciting things going on in my career life, but I don’t talk “at” folks, I talk to and with them.
If people talk to me, I generally follow them back. I don’t care if they’re butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers. I don’t only follow important people, or publishing people, and I don’t follow hardly any celebrities. Love political tweets because I’m a political junkie. I periodically warn anybody who follows me that I have a dark & twisted sense of humor and tweet too much, so they can unfollow if they hate that.
I love Twitter. It’s a big old conversational ball of happiness that tickles me all the way to the bottom of my extroverted soul. I’d give up MySpace and Facebook in a heartbeat if I had to make a choice.
Oh, and please PLEASE everybody come say hi to me in DC. Especially if you’re an introvert and need to hang with chatty people but are shy to approach. I’m hella approachable!!
Oh and I’ve made several new friends from Twitter – feel like I know them really well from hearing about their kids and their dogs and their lives and I can’t wait to meet them in person!! Yes, I’m half Susie Sunshine and half PollyAnna, maybe, but life is too short not to enjoy meeting new people and new friends. Did I mention I love Twitter?
LOL.
Have twitter. Now LOVE Twitter. Got a Twitter account about 2 years ago, but no one was on Twitter by that stage, and it didn’t really interest me. Got REALLY interested in Twitter earlier in the year and just love it now. Just passed 666 posts today. Yesterday & today were great days on Twitter for me, as the national Youth radio station JJJ (http://tripleJ.net.au) today (and yesterday) revealed “JJJ’s Hottest 100 songs EVER” as voted by an incredible 500,000 peeps around the country. (which is actually about one in 40 people or so here) And Twitter was aflow with twits about the songs. It was fantastic and a great way to feel a part of the whole thing, the community that was all listening to the same thing.
I love facebook, but Twitter I cannot get into. It’s like a gigantic chat room to me. And Tweets just seem to come and go. They are easy to ignore.
I’ve found clients on Twitter. People send out a message and I answer it. I actually love it. Facebook it great also.