Nathanael Boehm on web user experience design, the Internet, social networking & free wireless

Posted by Nathanael Boehm on January 20th, 2008 in Conversation and Collaboration, General, Social Networks

Twitter has been getting a bit of flak over at Molly’s post Twitter Sucked the Blogging Out of Me - although she doesn’t actually bag Twitter; Molly simply observes how Twitter has taken her attention away from blogging and that this year she’ll be moving away from Twitter and returning her focus to blogging. However it’s in the comments and responses to her post and in other blogs where people don’t hold back in their criticism of Twitter; how they don’t see any value in it, how it’s making people “dumb” and just haemorrhage half-backed thought onto the Internet.

Well, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion - although I’m more likely to consider the opinion of someone who’s tried the tool instead of just glancing at the Twitter home page (if that) and then writing a thousand words about how useless it is.

Clearly, if you haven’t guessed already, I’m in the camp of people who appreciate Twitter;

My stats at the time of writing: Following 146, have 144 followers, 577 direct messages and 7,372 updates/tweets (private feed).

Ok, few of my tweets are professional in nature - however I’ve had the opportunity several times in the past few weeks to tell my boss how I’ve used Twitter and my professional network of colleagues through Twitter to accomplish various tasks, get advice and help with my work. Of course, Twitter has helped more than just a few times in the past few weeks but it’s just recently that I’ve taken to actually letting my boss know the benefit of Twitter (in case he was getting suspicious about how much time I was spending on Twitter - which I know he isn’t; he trusts me to use my time wisely. If I was on MySpace all day, that would be different).

For example, on Friday I enlisted the help of someone through Twitter to help me with getting a new Linux installation configured for a new site for work, because I don’t have access to resources at work and don’t want to have to engage the services of a vendor for such a small task. I’ve had help recently with some concerns I’ve had with the role of someone in my professional within the context of a project and based on those discussions with people via Twitter I now have a plan of action to make some changes to my role and the project I’m involved with to minimise risk and ensure I’m actually adding value to the project rather than simply fleshing out someone else’s ideas. I’ve had help with HTML and CSS through to general Windows and computer configuration, even Meraki configuration … all within minutes of me posting the questions; and I know the answers are coming from experienced people with proven credibility and authority to respond to those questions. Not to mention all the news and event notifications, new tools and web applications that have been launched.

It takes time to build your network. Even if it were technically possible, you can’t simply clone your contacts list from one social network to another … it’s a different model, different way of interacting - it takes everyone time to learn, to adapt, to find their place - to either adopt it or discard it.

If it doesn’t or didn’t work out for you - that’s unfortunate because I know how useful a tool it is for me; I suggest you at least try it - if you find it to be just a time waster then of course ditch it, and while there’s admittedly a lot of social fluff around twittering there are the small gems of value that make it more than worthwhile.

Though not exactly related to the topic of this post, have a read of Tara Hunt’s post on “Futzing”, because it happens a lot on Twitter!

And another good article on Twitter for professional use - though that’s more about actually integrating Twitter into your blog.

Tags: colleagues, communication, futzing, interaction, professional, socialnetworks, twitter