Social Media: The Benefits of Twitter

Twitter, as a Web 2.0 app, is often confusing at first glance, because the typical Twitter-user homepage resembles gibberish; an effect that comes from reading only one side of a person having many conversations, interspersed with random thoughts, links and reports of mundane minutia – 140 character microblogging. Even clicking “with others” isn’t much help as the asynchronous nature of the exchanges make these conversations very, very, difficult to follow.

This has led Dave Davison of Thoughts Illustrated, who has great experience in high tech angel investing, to ask of Twitter, “What is the Return On Attention? (ROA)” and ultimately, he came to the conclusion that twittering, unfiltered, is mostly attention-wasting noise.  As a consequence, Dave now uses one such (multiplatform) filter, Friendfeed and no longer twitters.

So then, what good is Twitter? Here’s the “Return on Attention” that I’ve found from using Twitter:

Conversation Within An Existing Network:

I kick around ideas, shoot the breeze or just stay in the loop with what is happening with Shloky, John Robb, Michael Tanji, Selil from SWC,  Adam Elkus, Charles Cameron and Shane Deichman. Additionally, Chirol, Sean Meade, Curtis of Dreaming5GW, Critt Jarvis and Dan of Tdaxp are alo on Twitter but “tweet” very irregularly.

Note that many of us have actually met in person, some more than once and/or have been interacting online together for years. This is where Twitter is going to yield the most value, given the 140 character limit of the “tweets”; a shared understanding is necessary to maximize the utility of this app.

Network Building:

Adding to the above group, which has clearly defined interests in 4GW, strategy, intel, COIN, futurism and technology, teaching and writing, was relatively easy. Joining us after a time were Fantomplanet, Jeffrey Carr of IntelFusion, Sandbaggerone, Fester of The NewsHoggers and Powerweirdo ( of many sites). The signal to noise ratio in this group is very high – and what noise exists, social chatter, joking, etc. serves psychologically as a positive reinforcer.

Gateway/ Breadcrumb Trail:

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