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Twitter is really picking up speed these days, elegantly carving its niche between phenomena like sms text, blogging, Facebook and instant messaging.

Two observations: 1. Twitter is quick and easy. 2. Twitter displays a suprising flexibility, allowing itself to be tweaked to serve different (social/professional/commercial) purposes.
That is an instant recipe for success, you’d say. However, after signing up, many people wonder aloud what the added value of Twitter is. Its use is not always immediately visible and not always intuitive. While getting familiar with Twitter, you may find yourself scratching your head, banging it against the wall, holding it in your hands in despair or lending it the glowing swollenness that we all know as pride.

Don’t worry. It’s just a phase.

I took the Five Stages of Grief, as defined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, to twittering, as it seems that most of us move through different stages after signing up.

Stage 1: Denial

I don’t need it. I’m above it.
Sure you are. In fact, you are not wrong, Twitter is not a vital service to perform as a professional or to stay in touch with people.
But Twitter has more faces than it shows at first, and it may just make your professional life a bit easier as a quick monitoring tool, news aggregator or networking instrument. At the current pace, Twitter may well move past the hype and nestle inside the blend of communication channels for individuals, companies and press.

Sign up for an account and give it a try, but be patient. It takes time to develop and tweak to your needs. In the beginning, many people tweet about trivial things, to get a feel of what it is.
“Am getting a cup of coffee”
“Am enjoying my coffee” (or “Is enjoying his coffee”)
“Considering getting a second cup of coffee”
etc…
After a couple of these messages, the attention span of many people wears out. I signed up for Twitter for the first time in 2007, only to delete my account a few days later. I did not see how I could use it and I did not have the patience to watch it grow. Just stick around.

Stage 2: Anger

Twitter is useless! It’s an endless outpouring of mindless banter.
Well, the service was named after the sound that birds make. Maybe the developers never realized the many different possiblities it offers now. New users often get stuck easily in those trifling messages. It makes Twitter look trivial and wasteful. But there is more to it, it just takes time.

The time I haven’t yet lost on Facebook is now squandered on dim microblogging.
That is your own responsibility. Twitter should always be quick and easy and is designed to be exactly that. By the time you’re moving out of this stage, you may already have built up a small network of small-circle followers (friends / colleagues) and are following a similar amount. Still, Twitter i not doing things for you that other on-line services are not already taking care of. Once more, stick around.
Check out the many applications that will help you to use Twitter more efficiently. Integrate it in Outlook with Outtwit, connect it to your status update on Facebook, the possibilities are endless. Many of your tweets can be automated by text you generate elsewhere, and vice versa.

Stage 3: Bargaining

Building up a network in Twitter doesn’t happen overnight. Not even in a few weeks. See for yourself who you want to follow: not only friends and colleagues, but prominent bloggers and other writers will share thoughts and interesting links. Press publications and more and more companies use Twitter to share their latest news, offering you an alternative to RSS as a news aggregator. An advantage over RSS is the fact that news is aggregated, not by one channel, but by a much larger group of sources. News from a certain source can reach you indirectly but very quickly via any of the people you follow.

I have nothing interesting to say.
There is nothing wrong with that, there are many silent followers, using Twitter in a more passive way. Besides, your followers on Twitter aren’t like the followers of the Buddha: they do not shave their heads, sitting cross-legged with their mouths open in anticipation, waiting for you to speak. Everyone is following a whole bunch of people that together create a cloud of messaging. Your share can be minimal. Basically, you can announce (a news fact, a feeling, an opinion or an experience), you can ask or you can share (a link to another web source) on Twitter.
By now, you have decided to stick around because it is clear that there is more to explore.

Stage 4: Depression

Nobody’s following me.
Don’t take it too personal. This is the internet: people cannot ignore you because of bad breath, nor can they avoid you because you tend to make yelping noises whenever you get excited about something.
It takes a while for companies to build a network of interested followers, but a crowd of followers comes naturally with good content. Twitter has already become a medium that spreads news quicker than e-mail or IM.

I’m following everybody! Stop talking! Do I know you?
By now, the list of people you are following may be getting out of hand. And suddenly, Twitter is an annoying kind of static in the background, leaving you with a feeling you might be overlooking interesting tips or stories. Once again, apps come to the rescue: Tweetdeck, for example, will let you divide your follow-list into different groups. In Outtwit, you can track separate groups of people into separate folders. Also, un-following is not a sin, even internet environments can use a spring cleaning on occasion.

Stage 5: Acceptance

You like Twitter for what it is, because you have tweaked it to your needs. It does not take up too much of your time and you have largely managed to separate relevant stuff from white noise. Keep it going: every day, interesting new sources sign up. It’s up to you and your network to spot them.

Some more insights and tips on Twitter:
http://clickingandscreaming.com/2008/12/02/top-5-twitter-lists/

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 am and is filed under Professional, Web 2.0, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.