So I hopped on the Twitter bandwagon a few weeks ago because people were telling me it's a "must" for networking. Over the course of those weeks I've generated a little over 50 followers, but lately I'm beginning to think...is it really doing me any good? Are people really even bothering to head over to my blog based purely upon a random Tweet now and again?
To me, it almost seems like a waste of time. I know others might have higher degrees of success with it, but to be honest, I have far more important things to do with my time than type an update of what I'm doing every 15 minutes, which seems to be the only real way to generate followers.
What really got me thinking about it was a post the other day (forgive me for being too tired tonight to go find it) that detailed how a guy who posts Tweets for his cat has amassed over 500k followers...or rather, his cat has. The posts are all silly things like "I R rummaging in attic" or "I am taking a nap", "I am being cat-like", so on and so forth. And yet this random, boring crap has managed to garnish 500k posts.
Are people really that shallow?
Is Twitter really doing anything to help people's businesses, or is it simply a social fad similar to having Air Jordans back in the late 80s, early 90? I mean, I know there are people out there using it successfully for their business, but when I see something as stupid as fake cat posts getting 500k followers, I have to question the sanity of people. Why? What's the point? What purpose does it serve? When you talk to people about Twitter the only single, tangible piece of evidence they talk about is how many followers they have. Some celebrities are going around bragging that they have X number of people following them, clinging to their every move, from whether or not they had breakfast, to the latest bathroom they took a shit in. (For the record, if any of you have seen The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert you know what I mean. That scene where they are going on about the Abba turd is just classic. The lengths some fans will go to...)
I dunno. I'm really thinking Twitter is nothing more than another version of e-peen, with no real benefit other than being able to whip yours out of its package and say "look how many followers I have!"
On a side note, very productive day. Finished the first half of May's project, did some editing, did 2500 words worth of work on the latest chapter (should be finished tomorrow), did a DS article, some additional research, did some grocery shopping, submitted a query and got a favorable response (for a travel website...they are looking for local correspondents and they are supposedly thinking of adding Bulgaria to the list in the near future. Fingers crossed, but won't hold breath), and watched the latest episode of The Tudors. Wrapping things up for the evening and about to head to bed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I'm with you on twittering.
One potential advantage would be near-instant notification of something earth-shattering, such a mushroom cloud over San Diego. Then I'd have time to seal my house before the fall-out got here. But would Twitter be reliable, and would the circuits be overloaded?
Too true!
I want to say that Twitter is useless for networking purposes but I don´t really know - I just find it so annoying that I refuse to look at the positives.
The electronic version of hearing "Oh my god, I had this long dream last night, let me tell you all about it.." Please, someone, kill me :-)
Yeah, that's what I feel Twitter has degraded to.
I know a few freelancers who are using it to help expand their network and find/advertise work/services, but for the most part it's just people trying to max out their followers and type random messages.
I may not dig on celebrity news that much, but I laughed at a comment Zac Effron (name?) made a few months back regarding Twitter. Apparently he does not have an account, and said something along the lines of "What's the point? So I can twit about being in the bathroom stall, taking a dump, and talking about the amount of TP I'm using?"
That, to me, said it all :)
Post a Comment