I never understood the draw. Twitter appeared to be the poor stepbrother of the Facebook status, with an imposed character limit and no way to directly associate a comment. But now, the benefits are starting to become clear.
On Twitter, you don’t get invitations to join someone’s mafia every five minutes. You can build your audience (as a blogger and aspiring novelist, for instance) beyond your friends and relatives and high school classmates you never liked but accepted as friends anyway because you’re trying to build your audience. And, perhaps most importantly, Facebook is blocked where I work; Twitter isn’t.
10 Reasons You Might Want to
- You want more of me. You love The Wheel and hate that I post so infrequently. Since I’m sure to post to Twitter more often than I do here, you’ll get even more of my trademark witTM.
- You want less of me. You like my sense of humor, but can only take me in small doses. 140 characters seems about right. And if that’s still too much, you can stop reading halfway through.
- You doubt my abilities. You don’t think I can put together a coherent thought in under 140 characters, and want to see this experiment for itself.
- You’re sure of my abilities. You know I can’t put together a coherent thought in under 140 characters, and want to watch me crash and burn. You’ve brought popcorn.
- You’re lazy. You haven’t gotten off your duff and found yourself an RSS feed, so you never know when I’ve written a new blog post. On Twitter, I will tell you. You don’t even have to get up.
- Payback. I’m already
stalkingfollowing you, and it’s only fair. - To cover all your bases. You’re already
stalkingfollowing me everywhere else: Blogger, Facebook, work, that little sandwich shop on the corner. In fact, you’re outside my house right now. Rather conspicuous for a federal agent, I must say. And will you leave me alone, already? I wrote that manifesto months ago. - The voices told you to. Specifically, the ones on your voice mail, which sounded a bit like me but with a horrendous Jamaican accent. Ya, mon. Check da tweet, mon.
- Everybody’s doing it. I already have as many
stalkersfollowers on Twitter as I do here. Clearly, people will hang on my every word when I use fewer of them. Later, I’m going to jump off a bridge. - The perfect banana bread recipe. I have it; you want it. Maybe someday I’ll post it. Better
stalkfollow me, just to be safe.
Lurk.
You'll have to convince me. I just don't get twitter. Seems so pointless. What do you actually DO on it? Write a million status updates and expect strangers to reply to you?
ReplyDeleteWhoah. That sounded blunt. Didn't mean that to sound so disapproving. :o) But seriously, I'd like to know. Would you like to enlighten me? Pwetty Pwease? *flutters eyelids*
Before I can convince you, I'm going to have to convince myself. I'm still not sold on this whole Twitter business, but I figure a) it's free, and b) there's a chance it'll drive more traffic to my blog. Only a small chance, but a chance nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteI consider it a trial run. If this tweeting thing pans out, great! Then I'll be able to enlighten you. If not, then all I've done is waste a little of my time. (Though, I'll also have wasted was other people's time, so it won't be a total loss.)