To Twit or Not to Twit

When I first heard about Twitter, my initial reaction was: “How retarded.”

Why did I need to know the most mundane information about people? Why did I need to share my own mundane information with others? And why on earth would I follow or want to be “followed” by total strangers?

The whole concept struck me as yet another way to waste time on the web, under the guise of “social media.”

Marketing Kitty’s cat-like tendencies were kicking in. Change? I don’t like change. Hisssss. I’m not Twittering.

I moved on from my initial hesitation and got myself a Twitter account. My first tweet?

Talk about retarded.

But I was curious. There had to be more to this than talking about frozen yogurt. I thought about how to use Twitter for work. What if I followed people who were interested in the same things I’m interested in? What would I learn?

So I went to twitter and did a few searches. One on Marketing 2.0. Another on Web 2.0. And another of Enterprise 2.0. The results weren’t so overwhelming that I didn’t know where to start — just a few dozen people who had listed the same interests as I had in their profile.

I poked around in some of these profiles, finding people that I thought were interesting and had relevant tweets.

I followed them.

Oddly enough, some of them started following me.

After playing around in this new land of Twitter for a few hours, it all didn’t seem so retarded anymore. (Except for the terminology. I still find that pretty moronic: tweet, twittering, tweetup, twaffic, etc..) See more doosies here.

I saw “thwirl” listed next to some people’s tweets and wondered what that was. Ah. A desktop app that makes it easy to see what all the people I’m following have to say. I downloaded it. Kind of cool. It just sits on my desktop and updates automatically. I can put in my tweets as well.

Over the next few days I learned a few more tricks: directly responding to someone (d twitter name), replying to someone (@twitter name) and twittering from my cell phone.

Could I live without Twitter? Yeah. Sure.

But it is useful? Yes.

Lots of the folks I follow post links that are relevant to me. Or they comment about stuff that’s just plain interesting. News travels quickly on Twitter. I heard it there first about Tim Russert’s heart attack. About Obama beating Hillary.

As I follow more people that I know, it’s a really simple way to know what they’re up to without actually having to talk to them. That sounds crazy and antisocial but it isn’t. It’s hyper social. I can know in an instant what my friends are doing. Who’s packing for a business trip, who’s stuck at the airport and who, possibly, just ate frozen yogurt. It’s a great way to stay in touch without doing a whole lot.

Perfect for those of us trying to stuff 25 hours into a 24 hour day.