The Value of Twitter

A LOT of blog posts have been written questioning the value of Twitter. A lot. I know. So move on if you aren’t interested in reading another. But, I think (hope) mine has a slightly different slant.

Many proponents of twitter will argue that they get value by following like-minded individuals, mining through the worthless tweets (“I’m at the grocery store!”) for the valuable nuggets (“Oh, to fix that, just do x”). And I agree there is value like this to be had on Twitter.

However, the greatest value I get from Twitter is the community. I work in IT. IT departments can be small. Mine is. We’re well-suited to the size of our company, but still, there’s only three of us. I am the only developer (as I may have mentioned about 50 times on this blog). Twitter provides me with a virtual water cooler. A place where I can vent about silly, but frustrating things TO PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND. Seriously, if I said half of the things I say on Twitter to people “in real life”, they would look at me like I have two heads. Or at the very least, their eyes would glaze over, they would mumble something incoherent and walk away.

Twitter is a place where I can “hear” about other people’s similar frustrations. We can all laugh about stupid end users (not mine, of course, users of my applications are all brilliant). I can vent and rant, and read other people’s vents and rants. I can be frustrated and tired and not thinking clearly and tweet about it and get back six snarky and hilarious replies. The value of Twitter is that I can laugh and move on, get back to work refreshed and ready.

Seriously, isn’t that incredibly valuable to a company? Rather than pumping me full of crappy coffee in the hopes that I can caffeinate my way through the day, we should have mandatory Twitter breaks.

Poor Twitter

I coincidentally got two new followers (that appeared to be junk) seconds before Twitter died today. And is it just me or does EVERY TV show/news broadcast mention Twitter in an effort to come off as cool? Doesn't that mean Twitter is completely lame?

I hope not because I am totally addicted to it. I love that I get both useful information and entertainment out of it. I have nothing insightful to say about it. Just that I love it and am sad that dorky "newscasters" think they are cool because they mention that they were Twittering the other day.