Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Wherefore Twitter?

In a recent post, fellow songstress Jannie Funster seeks enlightenment on everyone's favorite Interwebs phenom:
I’m frightened by Twitter.
Don’t really understand it,
neither the why nor how.
Several blogging friends
have tried to explain but I
just don’t get it. Am I the
only one missing the boat?
@janniefunster, that’s me.
Seeking any and all advice
on why and how to tweet.

I was right there with Jannie up until a few months ago. The first time someone described Twitter to me, my reaction was, "Why would anyone want to do that?" I didn't get the appeal of posting 140 characters at a time, or reading 140-character posts. Still, I gave it a try. I set up a Twitter account for cinderkeys. I found people to follow and micro-chatted with them. I tweeted random thoughts. I announced what I was doing. And it still felt like I was missing something.

Until I created a work account. Then I got it.

See, the purpose of doing Twitter at work is spreading goodwill about your organization. You find people who need help with stuff you specialize in, and then you help them. And they love you for it.

It's way fun.

Twittering at work, I'm an expert with useful things to say. Twittering from home in musician mode, I got nuthin'. I don't think there are too many tweeples out there looking for advice about songwriting.

My corporate persona is more interesting than my band persona. So sad.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's bad enough you use Twitter, but now you use a word like Tweeple in a sentence? I don't know if I can hang out with you anymore. ;)

cinderkeys said...

Ahh, it's an inane term, perhaps, but it allows me to avoid redundancy. I'd already used the word "people" twice.

DeppityBob said...

But doesn't using it three times make it "threeple"?

Anonymous said...

Well sure, it's easy to avoid redundancies in word usage if you just make up blergsnurfles and use those instead. But it doesn't make it right. ;)

Jannie Funster said...

Hey, fellow songstress!

'Way cool post!

I've certainly gotten some amazing tips and input on Twitter by doing my recent post. Very eye-opening indeed.

Tweetdeck seems to be the ticket, according to many. I'm wondering if that's the deck between the poop and the lido decks? I guess I'll have to find out by diving in.

Thanks for your input! I may start looking at Twitter with brand new eyes.

And for the link, wow. Lucky me.

Anonymous said...

No, I think Twitter is all about the poop deck. ;)

cinderkeys said...

I keep hearing about this Tweetdeck thing. What does it do, and why is it supposed to make the Twitter experience better?

David Powell said...

It's an Adobe Air application that lets you organize the Twitterverse into manageable streams of data. IMHO, if you know a fair number of people on Twitter, it actually makes Twitter feel a bit like Quartz.

cinderkeys said...

Ahhh, I still miss Quartz.

Guess I'll have to try that.