It’s great knowing I can come here and you, the Twitter Queen, will update me on everything new

Todd – I’m new to Twitter (as in 1 week ago yesterday I opened my account) so maybe I’m misguided in my views. The Twitter users seem to have picked up on the potential and changed Twitter from the “what are you doing right now” application that it started out as into more of a “what can I do to connect you to someone” application. The only way that can happen is through genuine conversation. We talked about engagement vs. visibility yesterday and I met some people that I probably otherwise would not have met, had it not been for that conversation.

Conversation is what connects people – not one or two daily updates. Daily updates don’t intrigue me. The fact that a grown man likes Cap’n Crunch Boo Berries does.

~Renae

Todd…. do people really just want to know what you are doing? Engaging others in conversation…. If everyone always just spouted off what they were doing it would be all talking at once. Now, if your key to your comment is “long back and forth conversations” one on one, ok – take it to SKYPE, DM or somewhere else. However, many times it is a group of people @engaging in conversation together. (you knew someone had to go here, lol

Nick- It’s hard to follow along while at conferences, there’s too much!

Todd- Don’t worry, I don’t think it’s controversial what you’ve said nor is it a new argument. There are many schools of thought regarding Twitter (none of which were discussed in the article, this was simply an article to point out tools for others) but I will address for you anyhow (keeping in mind that there is no set formula for Twitter use and the community is already existing which makes behavior change difficult):

School of Thought #1: Twitter IS an instant messaging service. Some people don’t like it being used as such and the amazingly wonderful feature of Twitter is the “unfollow” button. Many people follow along only while they are physically at their computer dedicated to Twitter and carry on many conversations while there and cross-pollenating groups of “friends.” In this theory, users are connectors and introduce each other to their other friends and grow their networks by being a resource. Some consider that “pollution.”

School of Thought #2: Twitter is ONLY for updating what someone is doing at that moment and should be limited to hourly updates. It is not for discussions (or “instant messaging”) rather so others can be voyeurs in one anothers’ lives. Then, if there is a connection made and person A can get person B to follow them so they can direct message, a conversation is held in private.

I personally subscribe to the first school of thought and do a great deal of business on Twitter. I have as many direct messages as I do public updates, I handle much of what I do in private but continue to speak publicly. In private, a real estate blogger asked me the other day, “who the hell are all these random people you’re talking to, they’re not even important in real estate!” My response was “many of them are in Austin, I’m here to communicate with people in AND out of real estate, but most importantly people IN OUR MARKET.” There was no response.

Regardless of anyone’s school of thought and the belief that a threading tool or a grouping mechanism will change others’ behaviors, it doesn’t matter- Twitter is voluntary and when someone’s too loud or they bash your candidate, there’s an awesome little “unfollow” button- don’t you wish there was one of those in real life!?!?

“Twitter is not am Instant Messaging service!”

By publicly conducting long back-and-forth conversations using the @ reply, are we polluting the utility Twitter provides, causing our followers to page through “conversations” that should have happened in IM or via Direct Messages?

Many think that the new “groups” feature inside the secret version of Twitter being beta tested right now will address this supposed “pollution problem”, but for the moment should we limit ourselves to just one @ reply per day? Two? Are long @ reply conversations inside Twitter really “pollution”?