Why Do You Hate Twitter
Written by Robert Bacal | 
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| The Never Ending Social Media Interview - Twitter |
Q: You've made a number of negative comments about twitter, the "huge" rate of account abandonment, and its limitations. You've even suggested that Twitter is the most vulnerable large platform when the social media bubble bursts in a year or two. Do you really hate Twitter?
Robert: Actually, among all of the social media platforms I LIKE Twitter most of all as a fun thing to play around with. It works much like my brain works, in short episodic bursts and I find that fun, and stimulating. I believe that it's limited as a tool for almost everything else beyond having fun. Fun is good. For a writer it's a goldmine to stimulate thoughts and article ideas. So, I also like it for that.
Q: If you don't feel Twitter has much business value, why do you have multiple accounts and have sent so many tweets?
Robert: I know it seems contradictory. I DO have multiple accounts and they exist out of consideration for anyone who happens to be interested in what I have to say. Twitter is a people based system (you follow people, not subjects generally) while I want people interested in social media not to have to read my material on performance management. People have different interests, so why should they be stuck with ALL of my tweets?
Q: That doesn't answer WHY you use it at all?
Robert: No. Sorry. I use it because it's fun -- there's a rush / stimulation attached to it, and while it tends to overstimulate me, I like the feel. It's probably not that healthy for me. One or two other reasons. It "might" help business, although in a year I've seen no evidence of this of value. I can track that somewhere from 5-10 people on average click on links I put in each tweet, but for some reason many never actually arrive at my site (or get logged). That's pretty wretched since I have 5000+ followers on my main account.
The bottom line is that it might work a bit for business, I enjoy it, so why not? I have no illusions. It's still not an effective use of business time. Period.
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Scoundrel
MicroThoughts
You can tell your "social media expert" is a scoundrel or utterly ignorant if they use the phrase "They just don't get social media". The truth is that the expert doesn't get social media, or how human beings work and is unable to come up with anything better to refute arguments or disagreements about social media.
Mashable no-no
In response to a Mashable article about how Starbucks supposedly used social media to bring one million people into their stores in a day:
This is just terrible "journalism". First, the giveaways brought the people in. Second, we have no idea how many people came for the freebies hearing on it from Twitter or not. Third, They could have pulled people into their stores with this promotion in any of a number of ways. This is not a social media success, anymore than having sandwich board guys outside of each store would constitute a success for loitering.
Learn From Competition?
Some believe you should monitor and emulate your competition on social media. Here's a thought:
If you look at your competitors, will you end up looking like your competitors? The ongoing issue in any marketing or even in developing a network is how to standout FROM the competition, and not to BE like the competition.
Social Media Frauds
You know someone isn't worth following if they retweet compliments given to them by others. They are either frauds who are better at self-promotion than they are in their alleged area of expertise, or they are so insecure that they have to -- just have to, make sure that everyone knows how wonderful other people think they are. Hint: Run away. These folks are like empty drums. Bang on the outside and you get a cool sound. Empty inside -- nothing to offer.
Immersion
You cannot fully understand social media solely by being immersed in it. In fact, one reason why there is so much bad information about social media is that most of it comes from immersed people. The full picture is only available to people who can DISTANCE themselves emotionally and intellectually and see social media from the outside -- as most human beings view it.
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