Twitter is Useless

Okay, so this Twitter thing is completely useless for marketing purposes. I can see some value, albeit very little, in the service if you’re a teenager or an extreme Internet geek. But for any practical business purpose, it’s a waste of time.

Do the clients of IBM, FedEx, or Jet Blue really care what the company or CEO is up to, right now? No. Twitter is old-school marketing in the fact that it’s the author telling the audience what they think they want to hear. All too often the stuff that comes out is useless information like, “I’m waiting on sushi” or “I need to insert code into this form to…” How does any of that help to build a relationship with the client? I don’t think it does.

What’s your take on Twitter?

11 Responses to “Twitter is Useless”


  1. 1 kevin March 15, 2007 at 3:03 am

    The name of my post will tip you off to what I think.

    Twitter Hater

  2. 2 Michael Morton March 15, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    That’s a great post Kevin!

  3. 3 Bill Hampton March 16, 2007 at 10:27 pm

    Agreed. I was told my a friend that I needed to check it out. As I dug into it, I saw no purpose to it. For kids, now that’s a whole new ballgame. I think they will (or are) eating that up. But for executives or business people. . .not so much.

  4. 4 TravisV August 22, 2008 at 9:18 am

    It is UTTERLY useless. A platform for the type of useless small talk that I intentionally avoid. No thanks. Do a search (search.twitter.com) for any of your friends who use it. Note the absolute lack of nutritional value of all of those conversations. Participating in this over time leads to serious brain damage.

  5. 5 In House April 4, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    Besides, the signal-to-noise ratio has gone off the charts. Although there may an occasionally interesting nugget of info, there are easier ways to dig them up.

    Anyone with the time to Twitter “for business” is really not working at all.

  6. 6 Sabrina April 18, 2009 at 11:39 pm

    Actually as a teenager, I think this is stupid.

    Utterly and completely useless as you’ve said.

    I mean sure I was there for the Myspace craze, and I do happen to have a Facebook. But Twitter? No thank you.

    In the same way that clients don’t care about how you’re waiting on sushi, I don’t care that you’re walking your dog or going to a restaurant.

    Has the public really gotten that attention-crazed?

  7. 7 Jeannie Wilson May 13, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    I just took a class on social networking this morning and as we all had wireless and our laptops I registered on twitter. I have been playing around with it and what a waste! I am a serious real estate broker with my own small company. Please! I have much better ways to spend my time – goodby twitter – by the way if you want to buy an awsome house or condo on the beautiful emerald coast in the florida panhandle email me or visit my website at http://www.sugarsandproperties.com. We have great deals – am I allowed to say this? Cheers – Jeannie

  8. 8 Chris Morales May 26, 2009 at 7:52 am

    Thank you for posting this!

    It seems as though Twitter is a vehicle for people who have both narcissism and A.D.D.

    “Who the hell cares about your 140 character, cry for attention.”

    I’m convinced users are those who are so self-absorbed that they think the world MUST be kept abreast of the minute-to-minute details of the most inane parts of their life, yet don’t realize how inane the details are, when they can fit the important info into 140 characters.

    Don’t know if you caught this one, but Business Insider / MarketingVOX released a study last month that shows that more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the month after signing up.

    Twitter’s growth has come, in part, as a result of celebrity exposure, which fueled a record number of people to sign up in March. A Nielsen report estimates that over 60% of Twitter users quit after their first month. Twitter’s 40% retention rate is higher than it was a month ago. (Pre-Oprah retention averaged below 30%.) But social networking giants MySpace and Facebook manage a much higher retention percentage (60%) of new users each month.

    http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/6-in-10-twitter-users-jump-ship-each-month-8928/

  9. 9 athena reich June 5, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    i really like facebook because i can keep in touch with friends, email them, share photos etc. but twitter has only 1 liners and i never care to read them. I post on it out of obligation.. ithink gee.. i guess i better twitter since i’m a musician but i never read what others write. seems a waste of time…


  1. 1 Hypercubed Blog » Blog Archive » µ-blogging, I don’t get it… Trackback on August 6, 2007 at 11:16 pm
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Who am I ?

My name is Michael Morton. I believe in bringing energy and professionalism into the office, that knowledge is power, that leadership trumps management, that customers are more influential than advertisements, that content is king, and that two heads are better than one. I currently lead the marketing efforts of the Strategic Alliances department of my company. Let’s talk marketing!

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