{"id":2717,"date":"2008-05-20T03:37:13","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T03:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2717"},"modified":"2008-05-20T03:37:13","modified_gmt":"2008-05-20T03:37:13","slug":"social-media-the-benefits-of-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2717","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: The Benefits of Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter<\/a><\/strong>, 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\u00a0microblogging<\/a>. Even clicking “with others” isn’t much help as the asynchronous nature of the exchanges make these conversations\u00a0very, very,\u00a0difficult to follow.<\/p>\n

This has led Dave Davison<\/strong> of Thoughts Illustrated<\/a><\/strong>, who has\u00a0great experience in high tech angel investing, to ask of Twitter<\/strong>, “What is the Return On Attention? (ROA<\/a>)” and ultimately, he\u00a0came to the conclusion that twittering, unfiltered, is mostly attention-wasting\u00a0noise<\/a>.\u00a0 As a consequence, Dave now uses one such (multiplatform) filter, Friendfeed<\/a><\/strong> and no longer twitters.<\/p>\n

So then, what good is Twitter<\/strong>? Here’s the “Return on Attention” that I’ve found from using Twitter:<\/p>\n

Conversation Within An Existing Network<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

I kick around ideas, shoot the breeze or just stay in the loop with what is happening with Shloky<\/a><\/strong>, John Robb<\/a><\/strong>, Michael Tanji<\/a><\/strong>, Selil<\/a><\/strong> from SWC<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0 <\/a>Adam Elkus<\/a>, Charles Cameron\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>and Shane Deichman<\/a><\/strong>. Additionally, Chirol<\/a><\/strong>, Sean Meade<\/a><\/strong>, Curtis<\/strong> of Dreaming5GW<\/a>, Critt Jarvis<\/strong>\u00a0and Dan of Tdaxp<\/strong> <\/a>are alo on Twitter<\/strong> but\u00a0“tweet” very irregularly.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Network Building<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Adding to the above group, which has clearly defined interests in 4GW, strategy, intel, COIN, futurism and technology, teaching and writing,\u00a0was relatively easy. Joining us after a time were Fantomplanet<\/a><\/strong>, Jeffrey Carr<\/strong> of IntelFusion<\/a><\/strong>, Sandbaggerone<\/strong>, Fester<\/strong> of The NewsHoggers<\/strong> <\/a>and Powerweirdo<\/strong> ( of many sites). The signal to noise ratio in this group is very high – and what noise exists, social chatter, joking, etc.\u00a0serves psychologically as a\u00a0positive reinforcer.<\/p>\n

Gateway\/ Breadcrumb Trail<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

When I “follow” someone on Twitter<\/strong> or if they elect to “follow” me, I eventually get around to checking out their website, blog or links with greater scrutiny. This is how I found Jessica Margolin’s<\/strong> Solvation<\/a><\/strong> blog, Carr’s\u00a0IntelFusion<\/strong> and started reading some of the blogs of the\u00a0hi-tech\/Web 2.0 gurus and entrepreneurs\u00a0who “follow” me but for\u00a0whom I mostly don’t\u00a0reciprocate on Twitter <\/strong>because, like Robert Scoble<\/a><\/strong>, their combined sheer volume of “tweets” would drown everyone else out.\u00a0 I have excepted\u00a0 David Armano<\/strong> <\/a>and\u00a0Scoble; the former, because I have been repeatedly \u00a0impressed with his command of visual information and he keeps his tweets to a reasonable number and Scoble because, despite his maniacal\u00a0aspect,\u00a0he is a “hub” for that entire subculture and occasionally posts up high value links like this<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I pretty much find something interesting every day on Twitter<\/strong> or by somebody who uses Twitter<\/strong> – like this piece on 5GW<\/a>. It’s a\u00a0useful app, if you accept the inherent limitations of the platform or if you intend to bring your entire network with you\u00a0and speed up the\u00a0 conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0microblogging. Even clicking “with others” isn’t much help as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,220,393,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-tech","category-twitter","category-web-20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}