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?
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The name of my post will tip you off to what I think.
Twitter Hater
That’s a great post Kevin!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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/
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…
As a teenager (19yo) and a internet extreme geek, I think that twitter is useless, if you want to promote some site, or some product or a party, you will need more space than 140 characters, if you want to share an idea you may need more space to say something more detailed than “I don’t like tacos”, I can’t see the point to let to your followers about what are you doing now…
sorry if at some point my english sounds weird, is not my native language.
I ABSOLUTLEY CONCUR…! TWITTER IS ANOTHER LAME ATTEMPT TO SUCKER MORE INDIVIDUALS INTO WASTING THEIR TIME ON LINE, VERSUS PICKING UP A TELEPHONE, OR ACTUALLY SEEING SOMEONE FACE TO FACE…I THINK “TWITTER” RATES UP THERE WITH “TEXTING”, REALLY WHERE DOES THE MASS “FOLLOWING” FOR THESE COMMUNICATION “OPTIONS” END..?! IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT MOST OF SOCIETY TAKES ON A “MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO” ATTITUDE WHEN IT COMES TO THINGS LIKE THIS…..
i am not sure if twitter is useless or not.
i am sure it is useless to me.
i am sure fleapapa.com with 1m users/postings is much more useful than twitter with 1b users/postings.
i think my thought is good.
Twitter is really useless.
Imagine thousands of people spending electric energy in offices and at their homes?! It’s against modern green movement.
Indeed it’s a stupid service.
I thought that twitter was useless at the beginning. Until I started trying it and taking a point Leo Laporte made. You only follow people you want. If you want to use it like the flavor of the month that celebrities are making it out to be then of course it’s useless. Post what kind of sandwich you are making.
But that being said, if you want to use it more professionally then you just subscribe to people that are using it professionally. I get mostly tech related posts and they help me stay in the loop.
The other huge plus that most people overlook is the fact that news comes very quickly on twitter (this can be a double edged sword and much like the rest of the internet it must be taken with a grain of sand)
Not too long ago, when the Iranian news was being filtered and held back, they were able to get news about what was happening because of twitter. Keeping free speech alive.
It’s a part of the web 2.0, where things are more about interacting than just putting your voice out there. I can hear the latest postings on a website, the new downloads on xbox live and other interesting tech stories by going to one location.
A lot of valid points were brought up here, but its only useless if you intend to use it like “my space” or “facebook” When in actuality it is perfect as a central hub to receive RSS feeds, blog updates, video updates and so-forth. The same can be said for facebook and the upcomming google wave.
It’s a tool that’s been around since 2005, its only useless now because of how people like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher are using it, if you keep all this in mind and use it as a tool, it can be very beneficial.
I hope twitter will flop like myspace