the MARTINI SHAKER

Wow! It looks like I finally wrote about something that people in the blogging/marketing community have a vocal opinion about.

I had a fellow by the name of Wes Mikel contact me via LinkedIn and ask me to elaborate on my thoughts from yesterday, specifically more on the topic of “so what’s so great about Twitter?” I thought I would post it here.

On 7/9/08 5:47 PM, Wes Mikel wrote:
——————–
Jeremy

I read your blog post about relevancy. As someone who has never gotten into the Twitter movement, can you please explain to me what the point of it is?

-Wes

——————–

Well, Wes, that is a very good question.

At first glance, the answer is admittedly “not much,” however just like any other form of social media the power lies in the connections that you make and what you choose to do with them.

The real value of Twitter is when you begin following people. Twitter is more unique than standard social media in the sense that not only can you connect with friends and family, but you can also connect with thought leaders in your field and gain insight from them as well as have (in some cases) an opportunity to more easily engage them in conversation.

Here’s an example. I follow a number of web “celebrities,” namely Robert Scoble, Kevin Rose, etc. Each of my followers are fairly active Twitterers, and as such I get lots of links, insights, and information that I would not normally get because perhaps they were too small of a thought to devote to an entire blog post. I also get insight into what these people are actually like through their personal tweets (i.e. @scobleizer Hanging out in Bellevue, Washington at the Crossroads Mall by the Library at north end of the mall. Come join us for lunch!). In this case, not only do you get to know what he’s up to, but you’ve got an invitation for lunch if you are so inclined.

And, as I said in my post, a number of the blogs I truly care about have established Twitter accounts and have tied their RSS feed to the account via Twitterfeed. Any time they publish a new blog post, I receive a tweet that has the post’s title and summary. Since they stream to me in quasi-real time, I can see a little better what posts I want to read and what posts I don’t.

If you’ve checked the comments on my relevancy post, you can see that there’s not a huge amount of agreement with me, and that’s just fine. I’m not sure I totally agree with myself either. I just thought I’d toss the idea out to the community and get their thoughts.

Twitter is an excellent tool for information consumption. It’s one that happens to suit me very well. It’s not for everyone, though. Some people will continue to miss the point, and that’s OK. Dive in and see what you think. Follow me at @3rdmartini.