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Is Twitter just for Twerps?

Rooting around for new media and blogger contacts the other week I came across this interesting blog from a Computing journalist, Martin Courtney with whom I have worked together on a number of articles in the past.

He is skeptical about Twitter and his sentiments completely echoed my own previous doubts about the medium.  I am by no means an expert but have learned a lot about its benefits in recent months.  Yes it can be a time waster and yes there is loads of drivel.  I almost never follow celebrities and am very choosy about anyone else.  But it’s also incredibly useful for keeping on top of information and current affairs events like the Budget.  The search is powerful and when combined with a dashboard application it’s very handy for keeping tabs on the influencers you need to monitor for clients.  Not to mention that it’s a de facto requirement for effective SEO activity.

I like to think of Twitter as a more convenient and user friendly Google Reader.  RSS feeds are great but they are not push in the same way that Twitter is.  And they are not so easily searched and expanded upon.  They require more effort. And most non techy people haven’t really got to grips with them.  I’ve been asking around and don’t know anyone who uses RSS but they all use Twitter for keeping abreast of things. Arguably the only people who use them do so for SEO purposes rather than consumers actually accessing news.

In the middle of the afternoon, when you need a little diversion, Twitter is also brilliant fun.  My personal recent favourites in the #middleclassfilms and #workingclassfilms discussions were ‘Aldi Kings Men’ and Lidl Women’. Brilliant!

So it’s not as cut and dried to say Twitter is a waste of time.  There are Twerps everywhere and I guess the beauty of Twitter is that in this medium, they only have 140 characters of airtime before they vanish.