Page 3: Will I Tweet Myself to Death

There are a LOT of people on twitter, and much like all the social networking apps before it – it’s snowballing rapidly into the “next big thing”. How many people are tweeting right now? Well, someone put together Twitt Earth just so you could watch them in real time live! Now that I’ve been using Twitter for 6-7 days, I begin to wonder “will I tweet myself to death”? I mean, the first day my cell phone vibrated 20-odd times from incoming twitter updates. You should have seen the look on my wife’s face, like “how old are you?” At one point during the night she said “that’s just ridiculous – this has got to stop”. But as time went on, and I got tweets on my phone in the car, at work, in the grocery store, mowing the lawn, doing the laundy, eating dinner, and taking out the garbage – I have to admit, it wasn’t that invasive. When I didn’t want to read them I ignored the phone (and they were there for review later). It was really cool getting updates from other bloggers when I was away from the computer.

The second night I had a twitter account I had to go to a dinner at my daughter’s high school. I knew that with twitter you could not only receive text message updates, but send them as well. So, I sent 4 updates to “40404” while at the dinner, and sure enough – when I got home they were all 4 on my twitter home page AND on my blog sidebar! Wow, I really realized what power twitter had that day. In 30 seconds I can send an update (from my cell phone) to every “follower” I have on twitter, my twitter home page, AND my blog all at once! It doesn’t replace my blog – it enhances it! But here again, if I didn’t have a blog at all, I could STILL use twitter for all kinds of things.

My concept of what twitter is good for is confined to how I see using it as a blogging and online marketing tool. But imagine how teens are using this? Salesman could use this, realtors too. Celebrities, bands, politicians, they could all use twitter as well with great results! I just don’t see how twitter won’t become the next “YouTube” if the next year+ if new users come in and do what I think they will.

Can you become “addicted” to twitter? Sure, just as much as facebook, myspace, or anything else cool online. What sets twitter apart is the fact that you can completely customize and control how and when you use it. You can send and receive updates via cell phone as I’ve described, but rember the “web” option I told you about in the beginning? With the web option you can send and receive updates via IM or Instant Messanger. So, you don’t have to use a cell phone at all. Or you can turn “on” phone updates when you’re away and turn them “off” again when you get back home. You can also just update and send tweets from twitter.com. You can even download and install twhirl, which is software specifically designed to send and receive tweets (like an IM client). New ways crop up each and every day to use twitter.

The whole key is to adapt twitter to the way you work, and over time figure out whether or not (or when) to use phone updates, the web, twitter.com, etc. I read Darren Rowse at ProBlogger turns his twitter off when he writes blog posts (so he’s not interrupted). Twitter has a much longer lifespan (in my mind) than mySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn because of what it does and how it works. It’s the first web tool I know of that takes blogging to a new level – even away from the computer. The only thing that will take this to the next level (and it will happen just as soon as we all get better phones) is the ability to “tweet” in both video and audio from our cell phones and gadgets. That will literally explode both podcasting and blogging like you’ve never seen before!

If I have convinced you to try twitter, sign up and follow me!

If you have something to add to this post, or a question – please comment now!

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