About 90% of my friends currently use Facebook. This might see like an obvious fact, but out of those 250 friends, maybe 10 use twitter. That is a fact that I find really interesting. I thought that it might be that here in Arizona, most people just don’t use it. I like to think that Arizona is a bit more laid back and quiet, and people aren’t desperate to know what is going on with their friends. They can wait till they get on their computer, or till they check their phone for status updates. Twitter is a bit more aggressive. Usually on twitter, when a person makes a status post, that is then delivered to you, usually through your phone thru text message. This can be a little more annoying to people and might not be everyones cup of tea. However Twitter does have its uses. Below are 3 great uses for twitter:
1. News Updates: Twitter is now prevalent enough that it beats most news companies in speed. If I hear about something, its quicker to go to search.twitter.com and find out whats going on in the news world.
2. Stalking Celebrities: I recently followed one of my favorite authors on twitter, only to find that he was a creep! This is definitely a double sided weapon. Most celebrities are finding twitter is a great place to publish their lives, but at the same time, it gives you more insight into what kind of people they are. I’m obviously not saying they are all bad, but some are definitely creepy.
3. Keeping in touch with friends (duh!): Twitter is a great place to follow your friends, because you can have a running dialog with them in real time over things that are happening to them.
Twitter is a great tool, and it has some advantages to Facebook. I still prefer facebook, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use both. 🙂
Twitter is also a great tool from a marketing perspective. Restuarants use it to announce deals, Woot uses it to announce it’s Woot off. The wedding industry has also used twitter to a great advantage. Many wedding sites have blogs by the people who created the site. These people get the word out in what is in or out during this wedding season. They also use this to highlight the cool stuff they find.
One area that I feel twitter is going to pick up is in the Educational world. There are so many resources for Teachers that many of them share it using twitter.
I used to use Twitter quite often. But after awhile I stopped. It wasn’t that I don’t like to tweet. I stopped for a few reasons. I would rather use twitter as a business tool. And many of my friends didn’t use it. Thus the vicious cycle continues.