Time for a Twitter Reality Check: Part II

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Facebook may have the numbers and LinkedIn may be a more effective business networking tool, but Twitter is by far the most provocative and interesting of the social networks. That has become very obvious to me.

Last week I started a discussion regarding my thoughts on Twitter’s shortcomings in several of the groups to which I belong. They include MarketingProfs, Nonprofit Professionals, Web 2.0 for Nonprofit Professionals, Tweeple and Twittering. I simply asked members of these groups to read my post Time for a Twitter Reality Check and then return to the discussion to share their thoughts. And share they did.

(An aside: If you ever needed a reason to join LinkedIn or increase your participation in it, the group discussions more than justify the time investment.)

The drawback to this conversation was that it took place across several different groups of people. I wanted to get them together in the same room.

Rather than synopsize the group’s thinking or simply write another response to the many comments my original post generated, I thought I’d bring the discussion here to continue the conversation. I think it illustrates quite well that (1) Twitter means different things to different people, and (2) we’ve only begun to scratch the surface in terms of our potential use of it.

And away we go …

I think the main issue … is the numbers approach. True, it doesn’t have the reach of Facebook’s 250 million+ users, but it’s a completely different beast.

Much of the slow uptake can be leveraged at the Twitter creators themselves – there have never been a really good introduction to new users since its inception. That’s improving now (the new Welcomepage, the Twitter 101 for Business) but it can still be improved on for sure.

Yet where Twitter really shines is in building relationships (much like LinkedIn for business networking). I’ve met some of the smartest minds around on Twitter and they continuously help me to improve on a daily basis.

It’s also incredibly useful for reacting instantly to a crisis for PR companies; or raising awareness or funds for nonprofits; or just making new friends. It’s a tired old cliche but you do get out of it what you want to get out of it. – @dannybrown

I agree with your general premise that Twitter is ‘not all that’. But it definitely is ‘some of that’, if you will. My opinion is that the key to Twitter is learning how to filter out the useless from the very useful. Twitter is a powerful tool that can introduce you to a world of intelligence and intelligent minds on any given subject if you are selective and targeted in people you follow and those that you choose not to block. It can absolutely be a time waster if you let it, but by spending your time wisely on Twitter you can expand your horizons tremendously. And by adding to the knowledge pool with useful information on any given subject, you’re helping yourself and others. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.- @kurtmalueg

I agree with Kurt. I set up a Twitter account, reluctantly, because unlike FB you can’t explore it first.

Within days I was getting an endless stream of follow requests – since I hadn’t completed my profile I wondered who all of those weirdos were. I got so many, in fact, that I finally closed the account until I could find a good reason to start up again.

Twitter is not friendly to beginners, and as Dan mentioned, nobody I know is on it, at least not yet.

I much prefer Linkedin for business and FB for fun. FB’s format permits more expansive communication and now, apparently, you can use it on your cell (something I have no interest in doing). – Sarah Thurston

Becoming conversant in Twitter has been a winding road. Lots of the experience has come through trial and error, or example set by other businesses that are doing an admirable job. Yet, when I recall learning the internet or email, that was largely self-taught as well. And I think that’s part of the coolness of the experience. (A new frontier!)

I agree that the apps that support Twitter, as independent businesses, are scattered. Ironically I have found most (tweetlater, twitpic, tweetdeck are my faves) via third-party searches rather than from Twitter. Yet, I now get why that is and now that the relationships of Twitter are blossoming, it doesn’t matter so much. What matters is the sharing. The great word-of-mouth. And reaching a new generation of potential alliances locally as well as nationwide. – @DesignCtr

Seeing your discussion post and comments, I read quite a bit of your blog added it to my Reader feed; clicked through to read many links that you’ve passed on; followed you; retweeted the slideshare deck (that’s now quite a chain of RTs) and returned here thinking,: “the other 95%+ aren’t relevant at the moment-some.. maybe later.” Connecting with people with common fields of interest and diverse perspectives, “who enjoy helping others communicate more effectively” defines the value of my Twitter experience, an exploration I can’t imagine elsewhere.

To reference Emily Dickinson, “I’m nobody…” and had you not started this discussion I wouldn’t have found your blog nor your Twitter stream and the wealth of references you have already shared.

I don’t see that as a Twitter downfall. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn-they complement each other as resources and loci of conversations, sharing platforms. And I agree with Danny here: the power of Twitter is that it IS user-defined & exactly what you want to make of it: from a news and information resource/feed to knowledge & research sharing and relationship building.

Regarding reducing noise and increasing usability, have you tried an interface like Tweetdeck or Seesmic to sort, group, focus on a specific interest, a scheduled chat or other hashtag thread? I’ve only half your twitter-time, and follow half as many yet… I would be lost without one of these tools.

Another thought: have you sought out scheduled chats in fields of interest?
The first that come to mind are #pr20chat (Wednesday’s 8-9 PM ET) moderated by @BethHarte, #socialmedia chat (Tuesday’s 12pm ET) organized by @MackCollier and @JasonBreed who have also put this site together around it- http://hashtagsocialmedia.com. Next Tuesday’s discussion will be moderated by Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs). There are several blog-related chats, #kaizenchat from @conversationage, Valeria Maltoni, and #blogchat. Are there any np chats already organized where you could potentially contribute and find new insights and connections? Perhaps you could start one You’re already following all the np-engaged folks I know. Then there are the best of company-sponsored webcasts w/twitter Q&A (e.g. Radian6′s conversation with Brad Dancer of National Geograpic Channel) non-promotional and, if in your sphere, engaging-in every sense.

In the end, we do have to assess and measure (or its just a time-sink), and the ROI is different for each of us whether we are here as individuals, representing a company/organization, or both. (You’ve probably read Beth Kanter’s post from last week; I’ll share it here for others grappling with this: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/07/bridge-conference-social-media-roi-mapping-metrics-to-strategy.html ). To date on twitter, I’m a long way from meeting my personal maxim, “Create more value than you capture” – I’ll have to stay on to make up for it. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to more of your tweets and blog & in return hopeful some of the way-over-140-characters above suggest ideas that enrich experience richer. - @dc2fla

Look at it this way: Twitter is a cocktail party, Facebook is a barbecue, and LinkedIn is a trade show. How much you get out of a cocktail party in real life depends on how you work the room. Some are great at it and others see it as a complete waste of time. Also, a very small percentage of the world will attend that cocktail party (same with twitter).

Some of what’s on twitter you can use, most of it you can’t. The people following the spam bots and other undesireables are likely using an autofollow tool that follows anyone back who follows them first. Personally, I wouldn’t want that but some people have a good reason for using them and the having riffraff in their userbase is the price they pay for not missing out on real followers.

As Diane mentioned, there are chats related to particular interests that are an online conversation. She didn’t tell you how to participate, though, and it is tricky to do. The easiest way to follow one of these chats is to go to http://tweetgrid.com/party and type in the username of the host, the “hashtag” (topic) and your own username. You can follow the discussion and tweet right from tweetgrid.

For example, every Wednesday I host #wahmwednesday (Work At Home Moms Wednesday). I post details on http://wahmwednesday.com and to follow the chat you would go to http://tweetgrid.com/party and enter @wahmwednesday #wahmwednesday and then your username.

It’s true the amount of spammers is obnoxious. Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com has just introduced a new feature where you can report spammers right from your user control panel. I always block spammers and I recommend you do the same.

If you have a brand that is discussed on social media, you really do need to be on twitter. Recently, Motrin, Amazon.com and CNN did some things that angered their customer base, and in two of the cases it happened on a weekend and their reputations were tarnished in a short amount of time. Fortunately they all recovered, but had they not been on twitter, it could have created larger problems for them.

For a great list of twitter applications, you can go to http://microblogging.com and there is another owned by @searchguru but I forgot what it is called.

I think it is a mistake to dismiss twitter, because your customers and prospects might not agree with you, and it’s important to meet them where they are. – @mobienthusiast

While I can nod my head at the factual points you make about Twitter user counts, etc., in your blog post, I believe the tool is what you make of it. As users it’s our responsibility to patrol the Twittersphere and keep it as clean as possible. I know people are often afraid to block others for fear of some sort of repercussion, but the reality is the more you block the “Get 1,000 Followers a Day!” Twitterers, the more likely it is their accounts will get reviewed and booted.

We can’t put the responsibility of keeping the community useful completely on the shoulders of the Twitter crew. As has been noted, the creators and managers of Twitter are fairly hands off so it’s up to us to filter when we can. Send those names of spam accts to @spam, block when you don’t like what you see, and keep your stream clean.

I block liberally, and without guilt. My criteria for blocking are pretty simple:

1. If anything in the user’s stream talks about making big money fast on the Internet, blocked.
2. If they’ve got anything posted about looking at their private profile somewhere else, blocked.
3. If more than three languages are tweeted at any point in time at complete random, blocked.
4. If the user is following a ton of people and hasn’t tweeted a thing, blocked.
5. If the user’s avatar is racy, blocked.
6. If all the user’s followers are almost all women or all men, blocked.

Just as it’s our responsibility in life to keep our streets, local parks, and neighborhoods clean and safe, so is it our responsibility to do the same in our online communities. Maybe the next part of the responsibility equation is petitioning to Twitter to come up with expanded rules of use and a way of enforcing them?

And as far as finding quality people to follow goes, that’s just a matter of time and research. What you put in is what you get out.

Yes, technology should be user friendly and all that jazz, but there are times when it won’t be as friendly as we’d like. Twitter can definitely do better in helping new users get acquainted with the site, but…as far the rest goes, i.e., facilitating new relationships, can we really ask for that? Does Facebook do a great job introducing us to new or useful contacts? No, it doesn’t. It’s just a platform with more to it than status updates. And it’s just as easy to waste time there as it is on Twitter. – @TransitionalTee

Twitter seems to me to be useless. I’m a late comer but upwards of 99% of what I’ve seen on it has been spam. I have even less optimism about it than you do though. I think it is a passing fad that will go the way of altavista, aol, and myspace. – @PASociety

I am sadly in the 93.6% of users with less than 100 followers, however the followers I do have are translating into visits on my website and, in-turn, this is leading to increased numbers of professional membership organisation subscribers. There is a direct link between new followers and my list of subscribers, so I cant say it is entirely useless.

Feedback from my subscribers indicates that Twitter enables followers to receive ‘sound-bites’ without having to get ‘down and dirty’ with irrelevant content on my site. You may argue that this may indicate a lack of engagement, but it seems to be working for me and the content on my site is quite diverse.

Here is a list of other organisations successfully using Twitter in the UK – Department for Children, Schools & Families, Scouting UK, Womens’ Institute, Institute for Physics, CPD Institute, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development.

The bulk of the above orgs use Twitter to increase recruitment, retention and improve engagement. If they are experiencing my small-scale achievements it aint that bad.

It would be interesting to hear what others have to say in different areas of the not-for-profit sector. – @memberwise

Your timing is funny, because I joined Twitter one week ago, and today I posted a Tweet that I was massively unimpressed. Am I the only person who minds that their web server is very slow and their site lacks simple useful features?

I run an NPO dedicated to awareness and education about banking the stem cells in umbilical cord blood. My website “Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood” has one of the highest Google ranks in this field (highest for an NPO), where I get a half million “hits” per month, from 25-30 thousand unique readers.

A few dozen companies and NPOs in the #cordblood arena have set up a Twitter presence. They keep sending out Tweets which amount to “buy a contract with our bank” or “join and donate (blood or money) to our charity”. One charity in particular is using a PR firm to broadcast a news story every two hours. Its like getting today’s news digest, which all of us in the field have already seen, blasted at you every two hours. It is not clear to me that anybody is reaching the general public… even the national network of cord blood banks @BeTheMatch only has a few hundred followers.

It seems to me that people who follow you are either your friends or competitors or spammers. Aren’t Tweets to this audience just broadcasting to the already converted? The working concept of social media is to draw in friends of friends, but if you are not seeing steady growth in your followers then you are not drawing in new people. You do not get the same ROI as having a website which can always reach new people running a Google search. When I compare reaching thousands of new readers per month on the internet to having a hundred some odd followers, its not worth the effort. – @fverter

Does Twitter have problems? Yes. Will it eventually run its course while something else takes its place? Yes.

BUT Twitter is now. Landlines have run their course. I don’t know anyone under 30 that even bothers to have one. Landlines have been replaced with cell phones. That doesn’t mean phonathons were a waste of time.

Then there are the statistics on how many appeal mailings go directly into the garbage without ever being opened. Traditional Annual Giving has low low conversion rates – why should social media be any different? It’s not a better from of Annual Giving and outreach. It’s just the newer form of it. – Amanda Dunkin

From my side of the table I am seeing a few charities using twitter remarkably well, furthering relationships with donors, and reaching out in a way and engaging that was never possible before… I hope that as time passes some of these charities will be better at explaining how they did it – and while there is no golden key here – twitter – and most social media is all about relationship building. It’s out giving the people who support you and follow you what they need and what they want. Notice I didn’t say anything about YOU the charity. Once you get it through your head that you need to focus on what your donor needs instead of what you need – you will find yourself holding the gold key.

Donor centered fundraising isn’t rocket science folks. But I’m surprised at how many get it wrong.

I did a post about how one charity is using twitter – you can read it if you are interested: http://www.ideadesign.ca/the-naked-idea/everyones-atwitter-over-twitter/ – John Lepp

If you’re treating Twitter like Direct Response, you’re not “getting it”. We’ve been using it on @alscanada and enjoying great conversations with people.

We’ve nudged some of those conversations along into real time relationships with people by visiting them in person. People on twitter have held 3rd party events for us, advertised for us, sent us items for an online auction, we’ve been interviewed by the Toronto Star (largest circulation in Toronto) as a result of Twitter… and more.

The ways in which Twitter can benefit a charity are numerous, but it’s not an “ask for money & receive money” platform. It’s an engagement tool.

If you’re looking to immediately have thousands of followers who give you money, you are looking in the wrong direction. Nobody wants to be seen as a dollar sign. They do want to be seen to be making a difference.

Use twitter to converse and build your champions and you’ll find it to be a very worthwhile investment… and you’ll learn a lot about what your supporters think about you. – @Laurie_Pringle

If it wasn’t a certainty before, the internal Twitter documents that were leaked without Twitter’s permission a few days ago make it clear. What Twitter wants all those posts to be is not an ad platform, but rather a pulse. “The pulse of the planet” were their exact words.

As Laurie said, if you think joining Twitter is somehow just going to turn around your business or non-profit, you have your head in the clouds. And that’s also the best that can be said of any “social web marketer” who tells you Twitter is the answer to all your troubles, and that you can’t live without it.

Twitter’s creators did not build Twitter to be a marketing engine or mass-communication device for professional entities. That’s not what Twitter is, fundamentally. As one might guess (although many have not), just by the name and the basic functionality, Twitter was built so that any old whoever could just put in their 2-cents about anything, and that those cents could collectively mean things, or indicate things, or perhaps even do things.

If you’re using Twitter as its founders imagined, it’s actually plenty useful even if you don’t have a single follower. That’s part of what hash tags are for e.g., #ALS). Go ahead and search for a topic that interests you, using the hash tag. You can get idewas, see interesting users, contribute your 2-cents, and maybe have a conversation, even without followers/following. – @hendrey

I agree that most people are misusing twitter. Now assume that everyone used twitter correctly… used hash tags so their tweets were correctly categorized, etc… Used searches and saved searches, etc… I still contend that the amount of time spent tweeting would need to be massive for the average non-profit or business to stand out in the vast wine dark see of conversations that twitter can be.

Am I exposed to content I would not normally see because of twitter? Yes. Is it better than what I can get on my own? Debatable.

Where twitter wins, and facebook to a greater degree, is in the “warming” of the internet. Search is cold and scientific. You get a list of results from google… a faceless entity. With twitter you can get recommendation directly from people. (Again quality of the recommendation is debatable). I think most humans prefer this. I know I do. I’d rather go to a recommended mechanic than one I found in the yellow pages or on google.

So there is the secret to twitter. it’s word of mouth with a blow horn. – @LuisDeAvila

I’ve been thinking about combing through the people I’m following and narrowing it down to about 20 to make my homepage stream comprehensible.

Most of what I see – and these are all people or organizations I have genuine interest in – are simply links to articles I’m getting already in my RSS feed from them. Twitter is exactly like you said: “an incredibly powerful communication and social engagement tool” and to use it only to promote your [fill in blank] is a huge, redundant waste.

Most organizations – especially established corporations – are still seeing social media as just another ad placement. And that’s why their social media efforts are ineffective. It’s *social*. You need to use social skills to make it work for you. You can’t pick your nose and you can’t just talk about yourself. - @theakinyon

Where I have found Twitter to be very effective is in trading ideas with a modest number of great people in and out of my profession (Product Management). Some of the exchanges have been just fun, some have been very thought provoking. Am I exploiting it as some kind of mass media outlet. No, and I never wanted to. Am I finding value in it? Yes, but only by focusing, pruning, and being very selective, while at the same time being authentic and helpful. I suppose you could call my use of Twitter akin to a publicly visible but very concise discussion group. - @trevorrotzien

Like anything else, Twitter will become a more effective communication tool as more people use it effectively. So early people who are using it correctly, need to continue to spread the word on how to do so. Some of that will be online, but much will need to be offline. – @timjpriebe

I look at Twitter as a startup with huge potential, like Google or Facebook were a few years ago. Personally I use Twitter as a marketing channel to bring people to my website and blog. Some make direct money of this by generating enough traffic to their blogs to be attractive for AdSense to place ads. Others are looking for jobs and find offerings, or they can attract recruiters to their CV / LinkedIn / Xing / Viadeo / Hi5 webpage. Still others get user feedback and support requests (like Dell). Or they distribute coupons, ‘secret passwords’, promotions like Starbucks and generate massive physical traffic to their outlets. Some use it to attract people to their Craigslist ad extending reach. CNN and many other media bring traffic to their websites and news channels. The British and Swiss Government use it to distribute information about events, politics and legislation. Churches distribute bible verses. etc. etc. So there are many faces and uses of Twitter.

You can’t really say that users are only interesting if they’re active. It is the normal business model for broadcasters to have passive users and still they make money out of the business model (news or entertainment against suffering commercials). Similar for ‘gurus’ and celebrities who give some little stuff or nice words to their fans. The user activity lies in consuming the information, justlike reading a newspaper. Listening to the global chat. And sometimes this becomes very active like during the Iran elections, where even the White House asked Twitter not to interrupt the service, as it gave voice to the Iranian opposition (and channels to CIA and NSA, probably).

Is no one ‘using’ (what do you mean by ‘using’) it? Have a look at Alexa stats: yesterday 3.45% of Internet visitors (most from US) used Twitter (Google: 34.35%; MSN: 11.69% sinking; Facebook: 21.93%; AOL: 2.34%). With this Twitter is on rank 15 of the top sites accoring to Alexa. Not bad. No one??

‘Using’ for evil? NO. Most ‘users’ are listeners, spectators, consumers. Personally I’ve found huge value and insights from using Twitter. I found stuff and made connections with interesting people I didn’t know about 5 months ago, and I’m a rather senior guy.

Numbers lie? You trust Nielsen? Have a look here http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/news/news_releases/2009/june/time_on_facebook . 3712 pc year on year growth in the top 10 social networking and blog sites list.

And just thin of the combination potential if Twitter did join forces with Amazon, Goole, CNN, Facebook or whatever. Does Twitter as a company have a value? Yes? Well, the founders already founded Blogger and sold it to Google. Why would anyone want to buy it? Think.

Ok, nuf 4 now. Sure, I do agree with some of what you say, BUT, I’d advise not to underestimate the power of Twitter. I think it will become or already is a major force on the web. And the potential is by far not exploited. Creative firms and users have found and will find ways to build new businesses, marketing approaches, distribution models based on Twitter. - @top007

Wow. Martin said most of what I was going to say, and better than I could ever say it. To review: Twitter may not be for everyone, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s basically the difference between real and virtual connections.

Just a comment on the porn reference, that I don’t think has been thought of yet, or if it has, everyone is keeping it to themselves: Pornography has been the major driving force for every technology breakthrough we’ve made.

The key with Twitter is, you’re not obligated to follow back. I follow people I find interesting, and to date, that’s a little over 2600, although, as part of The Experiment, that number will decrease. I have as of this writing almost 3300 followers, and I would hope that those that are following me find me interesting or fascinating as well.

Twitter is a tool. Just don’t act like a tool when you use Twitter…. - @MatchesMalone

I read your piece about Twitter and my response is that you get out of Twitter exactly what you put in to it. I have been involved with Twitter for less than a year as @togetherwf. I have met many wonderful people all over the world. We tweet with each other often, sometimes share e-mails and phone calls, and yes, on a number of occasions have met in person. I have connected with many nonprofit organizations, some of which are now participating in my blog. There are many people who want to make genuine connections and do some good in the world.

Many people say they don’t have time for Twitter. My response to that is, building relationships does take time regardless of how you do it. But how many platforms give you an opportunity to build a relationship with someone in Germany while sitting in you livingroom in Pittsburgh? – @togetherwf

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the conversation. It’s my blog, so I get the last word. I agree with much that was said as to what’s already being accomplished through Twitter. That said, I look forward to the day when Twitter (or whatever replaces it) matures to the point where it becomes as useful and ubiquitous as email or the web itself.

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