What is Twitter, and Why Should I Care?

Twitter is stupid simple. So why doesn’t anyone seem to “get it”? The problem centers around what it was ostensibly designed for, and how gurus and businesses figured out how to exploit it.

Twitter was “supposed to be” a way for you to keep up with the friends in your clique. You and your friends would all create accounts for yourselves, and then you’d post “tweets”—a 160 character or less message—whenever you did something you thought was interesting, and everyone of your friends would receive your tweet. They could even get the tweet on their cell, for those over-connected folks.



This quickly degraded from, “Hey everybody, let’s all meet at Joes Bar and Grill at 6:30 tonight,” to “I’ve been working in my garden today,” to “I just gave my cat a bath.” Ouch.

In true social networking fashion, Twitter let’s you see who is following whom. Of course, that means you can enlarge your circle of connections by following (and being followed by) your friends’ friends. Now things are totally out of control, or heading exactly in the right direction—depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Frankly even your friends aren’t that interested in your garden or your self inflicted pet-bathing wounds. A good way to get “un-followed” is to post self-indulgent garbage when you’re being followed by people several circles out from your inner circle of friends.

However, what if you’re “somebody,” or are at least trying to be somebody? For instance, you’re a musician and you want to use Twitter. If someone is following you, they probably are interested in your latest work! Show schedules or blog links about the creative process could be nice, too. Collaborations could be pretty cool.

If you’re in business you probably want to be seen as a “guru” or key information broker. PLEEEEEEZE don’t say anything about your cat unless you tie directly into a business point—and with 140 characters, it’s unlikely that you can. However, those of us following you might be interested in knowing where you’re spending today, tomorrow, etc. We’d like to know if you’re attending a business conference that you think we should attend, too. Hey, while you’re there, maybe you could use Twitter to become our reporter on the scene—Twitter pithy quotes out from other speakers. You’ll be a hot topic in business meetings around the country for days, and the “go to” guy or gal when you get back.

Once you get more creative there are probably dozens of ways to use Twitter. Just make sure you think of the people following you. They won’t all “get” you, but if you kep sending out news they can use, your opportunity to build and keep a following increases dramatically.