I want to believe [that Twitter is useful]

  Why Twitter is Over Capacity 
  Originally uploaded by Jeremiah Owyang.

Twitter - do you love it or hate it?  I think your response to that question depends on why and how you use the application.  This drives the type of content you'll find valuable, the number of people you follow, and how you use text notifications and tracking.

Giving the continuing technical difficulties that Twitter has been facing - apparently birds moving whales can be quite difficult - I've been getting less value from my network.  I use Twitter as a heads up tool, to get advice, to connect with virtual communities, and to bridge communications from online to in-person (esp around events).  I was following almost 1,000 people - so getting information was either serendipitous when tuning in or via @/DM.

But I'm not getting text notifications like I used to.  So, inspired by some conversations and posts with/from Mitch Joel, Greg Verdino, and Mack Collier, I've decided to shift the way I'm using Twitter to make the conversation more manageable.  Similar to pruning my LinkedIn network, I unfollowed about 80% of my network, leaving only people whose names and/or pictures I recognized immediately, as well as people who I could remember having a helpful conversation with at some past point.

(remember is the key term here - my memory isn't fantastic and I'm bound to have offended some. My apologies, I will add you back.)

To me, Twitter content works best when personal.  Whether it's something you're doing or something you're thinking.  So I'm trying a new approach to Twitter, because I want to believe it's useful.  Maybe it's just microblogging that's useful and Twitter will ultimately pull a Friendster.

I think I'll go log into Pownce, haven't been there for a while...

Comments

[Max Kalehoff]

Pete,
Twitter can be useful. I wrote a short essay on how to make it work for you: http://www.attentionmax.com/blog/2008/05/why_twitter_matters_-_and_why_i_just_might_follow_you.php

Sorry for the blatant link.
Cheers,
Max

[Pete]

Max - I remember that post and have kept your rules loosely in mind. I get in trouble with #3 - I've been too generous on the follow back. Personal content is personal and if I don't know someone personally, there's little value to that content. If that makes sense.

[Adam Daniel Mezei]

Maybe it's just me...but Twitter's graph has gone like so: steep incline...flat..then a gradual upward climb after "first mover" stage...and now it's been plummeting steeply. I'd have to agree with you Pete, it's hard to follow so many people -- and the quality of the utterances/microblogs has gone down...predictable, I suppose.

Personally, what I really enjoy about it twitter is it gave a lot of early exposure to some of my voice work at Utterz.com...and it kept some close people abreast of my moves and shakes about the Continent, but not too much other than that -- well, I suppose, other than a copious expenditure of time which showed little direct bottom line payback, though that doesn't discount its social networking potential. However, I did get quite a bit from yours and J.O.'s tweets, for example...

BTW, I hope you didn't delete me --> I was at "gtowna" on Twitter. :-P

Wishing you the very best of things fr/ Prague,
ADM

[Ross Popoff-Walker]

I'm increasingly finding myself frustrated with Twitter. Mainly because of the basic site downtime issues. But also because the feature site is so limited. There's beauty to 140 chars. But Sometimes you want to write 1,000... or just send a picture.

here's my take on twitter's future: http://tinyurl.com/5taqou

[Kim]

I think Twitterverse is a good tool for digi-face-time availability, but certainly depends what you're using it for. For personal reasons, I think I might get a little stretched in my committment to it after initial fascination of its novelty.