twitter_300.jpgTwitter is the current 'darling' of the social media circles, featured on Oprah, and some say is in danger of 'jumping the shark' as it gains mainstream usage. And as Buzz points out, Twitter has its own set of etiquette communications challenges too!

 

Twitter has grown beyond using 140 characters to answer the simple question; 'What are you doing?', and become its own ubiquitous communication channel on personal computers, mobile phones and 'net enabled PDAs.

Background, or background noise?
As a communications channel, you can't deny it's actually pretty powerful. Everyone and every organization can become a broadcaster to their 'followers'. Businesses, charities, and government have all jumped on Twitter, with varying degrees of success.

 

Engage, Number One.

Twitter is all about engagement, and one of the best ways for organizations to engage with their audiences is to dedicate resources to social media like Twitter. In fact, Future Shop is going to dive into Twitter on Friday with these three accounts:


@FS_Deals - Sales, exclusive promos, contests and hot prices – tweets by the futureshop.ca team
@FS_GetItFirst - Updates on new products, midnight openings and notifications when stock is in on the hottest products
@FS_Connect - Informative Blogs, hot forum discussions, helpful how-to videos & other expert advice from the Future Shop Community team.

 

I'm told that the internal team at Future Shop will be actively monitoring these accounts, generating new tweets and answering questions as best they can (passing the others back into the organization for review). Very cool.

 

Listening in...

On the receiving side, everyone can select which content channels they monitor and news they receive by becoming a follower. Very democratic. And with the content limited to 140 characters, it's great for those of us with very short attention spans :smileyhappy: as the content tends to be distilled to its essence.

And for everyone using it, I'm sure they all have different reasons and methods. Here's mine.

What is Twitter?
It would take a book (or three!) to go completely describe Twitter, so I'll not even try. But I will overview why I use it. There are much better explanation online (including this awesome Twitter in Plain English video), but an overly-simple analogy I like to use when describing Twitter is to think of the old-school CB (Citizens Band) radio. You had 40 channels. Period. Everyone participated in conversations. You tended to 'live' on a particular set of channels, and some channels were 'reserved' for emergency use.

When talking on CB, you had to consider that anything you said could be heard by anyone listening. Sure, you could have personal conversations, but you were never sure who was listening, so the talk tended to be more general in nature.

The only significant difference is that with CB, you were limited by the power of your transmitter. Your message only went to your local geographic area. With Twitter, you're global baby. Which is why Twitter is growing so quickly, and why I use it to supplement my information flow.

A Tech Stalker?
My primary use for twitter is to keep up on stuff important to me. In the last federal Canadian election, I monitored live results across the nation using Twitter and other tools. By following other knowledgeable 'tech-twits', I can easily stay on top of trending technology topics. A small portion of the folk I follow include fellow FutureShop tech bloggers (@trishussey, @klausboedker, @mathewkumar, @buzzbishop and Paul (part of the @nextgenplayer team ), and industry pundits (@leolaporte, @Victor_Lucas, @SteveTilley).

As well, I often let my followers know when I've posted a new article here, or am currently reading something I think they'd be interested in, be it humorous, serious, or tech-related.

It's a fire hose!
tweetdeck_300.jpgAfter you follow 50 or so prolific tweeters, the website application can get quickly overloaded. There are many great tools out there to help you manage this flood of information. On the desktop or laptop I'm a TweetDeck fan. It's an Adobe Air application that runs on Win/OSX/Linux. For mobile, there are a number of apps for all the popular platforms.

You can't read everything...
So don't even try. Remember, it's a fire hose of information. The way Twitter works best for me is to simply 'ping' it from time to time. I have it running in background on my desktop. Between tasks or when I need a break, I check out the stream. It's much easier than trying to rewind all the conversations and catch up.

But that's just me.
As I said, there are many different reasons and methods of using Twitter...so tell me about yours! Let me know how you use it, and why? Or why not...many people don't grok it.

 

Oh, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter: @bgrier