Two tweets in to my Twitter experience and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the appeal is. Maybe I lead a boring life, but I’m not sure that anything in my life – at least what I can manage to say about my life in 140 characters – is worth reading about. I could be wrong (I already have seven followers – two of whom I don’t even know), but so far Twitter seems like a glorified away message you’re leaving for the entire world to read.
Even though I haven’t quite discovered why Twitter has become the must-have social media tool of the year, I have been pleased with how easy it is to use. It took me less than five minutes to sign up and post my first tweet. Figuring out what to do next was a bit more difficult.
I’m On Twitter – Now What?
After posting my first few tweets, I was kind of at a loss for what to do next. Twitter isn’t really like IM – it’s not like having a real conversation with someone, so I wasn’t going to wait around for tweets to appear in my inbox. Instead, I took some time to explore the site.
After clicking on the “People” tab, I started to get a better understanding of why some of my friends are on Twitter all day long. The “People Timeline” is kind of addicting, in a weird voyeuristic way. I feel like a fly on the wall in people’s lives, being able to read the most up-to-date news of total strangers. Not to mention being able to look at whatever image they chose to best describe themselves. (Here’s a tip even a novice tweeter should understand – if you’re going to take the time to set up a Twitter account, add a picture. It’s much more interesting than looking a page full of little brown double zero icons.) And by the time you finish reading the 20 tweets on the People Timeline, you can hit refresh and read 20 more new messages. This is a great way to procrastinate – especially when you’re trying to work on a 15-page paper about the evolution of social media in politics.
After more time spent on the People Timeline than I care to admit in print, I got back on task and started searching for corporate tweeters. The first company I searched for was Best Buy. I found 39 results in 0.010 seconds – 90 percent used the Best Buy logo for their icon. The tweeters included Best Buy employees, Best Buy stores, specific Best Buy divisions and product lines, and even Best Buy coupons. But out of all of those results, I really wasn’t sure which one was actually the “real” Best Buy. I picked the tweeter titled “Best Buy” (really the most obvious choice) with the following description: “Best Buy employees tweeting for and about Best Buy as we see it.”
I searched for a few additional companies and am now a follower of Apple (macTweeter), Nintendo (NintendoNews) and Target (TargetINC). To be honest, I have no idea if these are tweets sanctioned by the company or if the profiles were created by someone who just really loves that particular brand. Additional research is definitely needed.
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