Twitter: Tweeting Twits or Tailor-Made Tool of the Trade?

Alliteration aside, I am what some may call a rabid hater of all blog and networking sites whose main method for gauging interest is akin to a high school dance.  (You may choose your own details.)  Facebook, MySpace,  DeviantArt, LiveJournal — I can talk here, I used to be an eeeeeaaaaaaarly adopter, with a username people tried to pay me to give up — and other such 'friendslist driven' networking sites.  You know what I'm talking about.  For years, I've managed to stay away from the sheer ridiculousness that is "What do you mean, I'm not in your top 10?" and "Did you see what Nancy posted in her blog about George, who posted in his blog about Ray, who posted in Nancy's blog about that kid who set his pants on fire?"  (C'mon, Youtubers, you've seen it, too…)

So when Twitter started making an appearance a couple years ago, I subconsciously filed it under 'don't care' and moved on.  It was, to my way of thinking, just another popularity game with not-so-subtle hints of obssessive stalking and a continuation of the 'let's plug in to the internet and never leave' theme that's been creeping up on us (avalanched?) for the past decade or so.  Yes, as a web designer, I can't talk too loudly, so I won't.  About that, anyway.  This time.

Except… Then I learned that WD Weems had his own Twitter.  And that he was incorporating it into his blog.  And that, now knowing you can do such a thing, he was incorporating it into his blog in a pretty awesome way.  Oh, ho, ho.  I am intrigued.  And then he upped the ante:  did you know Andy Clarke has a Twitter feed?  I bet you do — he's got 1,682 followers (in Twit-speak, it means 1,682 people are watching his feed).  You're one of them, aren't you?  It's okay; stand proud.  I am, too.

This is where Twitter starts to feel vaguely stalkery to me.  On the one hand, I'm the kind of person who watches my IMs to see what everyone's away messages are.  If they're sufficiently clever, I leave a message with them.  If not, the tiny part of me that is a frothing-at-the-mouth Virgo is at least content to know what everyone is doing in some vain attempt at controlling the schedules and whereabouts of my friends.  (Why I am not dead in a ditch somewhere is beyond me — my friends are tolerant and kind.)  On the other hand, it's pretty fascinating to get a glimpse into the daily lives of people who are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than pixels on a screen to me: Kyle swears Andy is flesh and blood, but maybe he's just a really excellently crafted virtual reality rock star with fingers in every port worldwide, leaving clever comments like Alice, only with personality.

And then here's where Twitter starts expanding from simple stalkery.  Andy isn't the only web guru on the system.  Eric Meyer, star of meyerweb.com; Jeffrey Zeldman, of A List Apart fame as well as his own self-named blog; and so on.  I could keep going, but I'm on a time limit here.  My tea is getting cold.

There's a point to all this name-dropping, though, I promise:  all of these gurus are linked through Twitter.  Of course, Twitter isn't the only application that does this, but bear with me here.  The beauty of Twitter is that it only allows for a few lines at a time — there's a 140 character limit.  This doesn't allow for very much room.  It forces the Tweeter to keep it short and concise, either dabbling in the mysterious one-liner or laying out a thought-provoking statement of opinion or fact.  Or, my personal favorite, engaging in the slow, yet fun to watch, exchange of comments to each other, a la the all-purpose @ sign.  When they all meet up for a conference or event, the back and forth of Tweets and Twitterers takes on a uniform subject — from the saga of the disappearing underpansuitcase to the travels and travails of getting to and from and surving the conference in question.

As if this wasn't cool enough, the sheer PR capability of an easily maintained mini-blog is mind-blowing.  Not only can you single-handedly let people know that you're active, alive, and feeling chipper (or not), but you can always take the opportunity to network with your peers, as well.  You can input the code into your website, or blog, or whathaveyou, offering a neat and easy way to inform your non-Twitter stalkers that you're up and about and busy as a bee, or you can simply use it as a kind of periscope into everyone else's lives.

…It really does sound a little stalkish, doesn't it? 

So, a brief recap, then. Twitter:

  • A Toy: Fulfilling everyone's undying need to stalk somebody.
  • A Tool: Networking, idea-sharing, and a kind of GPS on the pulse of the community.
  • A Guilty Pleasure: Because I admit to an undying need to stalk people.

All in all, like any tool, you're going to find your fair share of twits as well as tradesman.  The key here is to find the community that you're interested in to begin with.  When used sparingly, and without the popularity-driven fanaticism of MySpace's friends list-padding mindset, Twitter can be a useful and effective tool of the trade.  As well as a guilty pleasure.

…What?  I've got my cake.  Now I'm going to eat it, too!