TWITTER – WHY?

I hear this over and over.  Nearly everyone I know ‘in real life’ thinks Twitter is a nonsensical waste of time.  Everyone I know who uses it however, would never be without it.  Why?  Let me try to go some way towards beginning to explain…

The first thing I did when trying to think about why people Tweet was to ask my fellow Tweeters.  Below are some of their responses (they start with @totallylaura because that’s me):

@totallylaura it’s like a water cooler letting me keep in touch with my mummy world (from @MuddlingAlong)

@totallylaura there’s always someone around for a chat whenever I get a spare 5 mins. It’s quick & the people on it make me laugh. (from @mummylimited)

@totallylaura It’s not just about tweeting – but about reading too. I like to read tweets with tips and advice that I might use. (from @bwebsites)

@totallylaura when I started tweeting it was about micro blogging & I used it like FB statuses…

@totallylaura Now it’s about friends & talking to diff people around world, it’s great (both tweets from @LauraSummers (another Laura Summers – not me!))

For me, I signed up a personal account which I can’t even remember the log in details for now.  I followed a couple of celebrities and didn’t really know what to do with it so I never went back.  Once I started my first online business I discovered that there was a whole mammoth networking opportunity open to me in the form of Twitter.  I signed up for an account and linked it to facebook so that my status updates there transferred straight into Twitter.  I felt quite proud of myself for doing this as it was incredibly time efficient to my mind… however, I was missing the entire point of Twitter by managing my account in such a way which I only discovered later.  A great quote by the renowned Mr. Bing springs to mind: ”The cushions are the essence of the chair!”.

One evening, for some reason I can’t quite remember, instead of updating my Twitter account via facebook, I logged in to Twitter itself.  I had the grand total of 14 followers.  I didn’t really know what this meant but started looking at people I knew and following some of the people they followed that looked interesting.  Before I knew it I was hugely involved in replying to tweets, retweeting tweets and debating with people I followed on all manner of subjects.

I was discovering that there were so many people out there doing all sorts of wonderful things and I was finding this all out without the use of Google. Now, if I have a question or want to source a supplier of something, rather than rely on internet searches, I will put a tweet out and see what response I get.

As stated above, it’s a great community and you know there is always someone there for a chat regardless of time of day.  You learn all about people from all around the world and how they live their lives.  It never gets boring as there is always someone new to follow and learn about.

The BBC published a story in August 2010 about twitter passing the 2 billion tweet barrier.  Pretty astounding; but what I found more interesting was the fact that Twitter took four years to reach its 10 billionth tweet in March 2010 and less than five months to double it.  Jaw dropping.

Twitter is here to stay, there’s no doubt about it.  Click here for a beginner’s guide on how to get involved.  In the meantime, I’m interested to know how many of you have accounts you don’t currently use?

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