Two Birds

I’ve only been using twitter regularly for a few months now, prior to which I didn’t see the value in all that noise and inconsequential nothing that seemed to clutter the twitterverse.  I didn’t really care what you ate for breakfast, or that you just took your dog for a walk, or any of the million other boring things you do in life that you feel the need to broadcast to the world.  It was only after a month (or so) of disciplined use that the value became clearer to me.

It comes down to a few things really:

• The whole is greater than the sum of the parts (i.e. Trends give twitter value)
• What people say in your network are probably more valueable than what you say, so retweet what matters
• It’s so easy, even a celebrity can do it

Trending shows significance

British Columbia recently finished it’s provincial elections and voters turned out to exert their opinion in the democratic process we call voting.  Individually my opinion doesn’t matter and makes no difference to the outcome, but collectively the vote effects change.  So everyone should feel compelled to vote.

Except that unlike voting, we actually get to hear your opinion.  It makes no difference if you tweet that you “Just got back from Mexico and feel a flu coming on.”  But if thousands of people tweet this we may start to see a trend and can possibly enact some action (Note: ignore your opinion on the validity of reacting specifically to H1N1 and just think in a more general sense).  This trending is what is valuable.  The real-time aggregate trend provides value to society (for social issues) and to corporations (for brand/product issues) and to consumers (by providing an open and public channel for discussion).  Therein lies the beauty of the social web.  If you have a problem with something, you let it be known.  As consumers, we are exerting more voice and control over products simply because it’s incredibly easy to do so.

Real time pulse on the world

We recently took a trip to the Okanagan and the Naramata Wineries, on the trip we heard news on the radio about the fire in West Kelowna (Westbank). The news didn’t seem to be coming fast enough or up-to-date enough for my liking so I fired up Tweetie on my iPhone and searched for #kelownafire. There was a lot of useful info that people were tweeting.

Your network is valuable to me

I follow you because I feel that you have something important to say and I value what you say.  There is an implicit trust there.  So when you choose to retweet what someone says I give the value of that tweet more weight than the random noise I see.  If I find it interesting, I may make a connection or at the very least find a new source of valuable information to begin following.

Likewise, when you retweet what I say, you expose your followers to my thoughts.  This connects my message with them at a deeper level and, again, helps me make connections.

I can also view a conversation between people which often offers two sides to an opinion which adds even more value for me and enables me to better formulate my own thoughts on the matter.  However, twitter is not chat.

Ease of entry

Despite it’s memes and oddities, twitter is possibly the easiest tool of public self expression their is.  Blogging takes too damn long, lots of setup, and requires that the reader spend more energy searching the content out.  Twitter is quick, takes practically nothing to get going, and you are instantly viewable by the twitterverse.  Granted, what you have to say is probably of insignificant importance and will likely just get lost in the noise anyways.  But if you twitter about something of value to someone, they are likely watching/searching for that key word and will start following you quickly.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t get it, just that you use it

So it doesn’t really matter that you don’t understand what a hashtag is, or how to retweet, or any of it.  Just tweet what matters to you and it will create value for someone else.