I tried and rejected Twitter in 07, returned in January, followed it via the Twhirl desktop client and the TwitterFox plug in, and now am basically saying it sucks yet again.
Sure, it’s another valid channel to monitor from a brand reputation standpoint. Who is bitching or praising brand terms is a good thing to know. But in terms of signal-to-noise ratios, it’s mostly noise, a classic example of the ourosborosphere/echo chamber promoting their latest blog posts, product beta, or book on social networking.
Only two twitter accounts really caught my attention — and both are demented. One was Merlin Mann’s @hotdogsladies and the other was @ainsleyofattack (recommended by Merlin). The reality — I don’t care what some Forrester, Jupiter, TechCrunch, GigaOm bloviator has to say about ButtDog 2.0, whether they want to organize a “tweet-up” at the brew pub after the BarCamp, or if they think Twitter’s Fail Whale is the meme of the week.
No, what I like to read is dementia such as this Tweet from @ainsleyofattack: “AinsleyofAttack It’s confirmed. During sex I sound like a laundry bag filled with chihuahuas being smacked against a MoonBounce.
So, rather than unsub from everyone who talks about things that bore me to tears (should it be called social media? what is the ROI of social media? why do airlines suck?), I decided to expand my circle of suck to include everything, and I mean everything, but joining the cool kids’ march to FriendFeed.
Which meant installing a FriendFeed desktop client — the Alert Thingy — which rolls the whole burrito of diggs, delicious tags, flickr uploads, Amazon buys, tweets, etc. into one cacophony of desktop alerts.
In some ways twitter is becoming like a cross between People magazine, Digg and Craigslist, only it’s almost exclusively for online marketers.
The Tweet of the week, Arrington saying “I’m on my way to a secret meeting at a local restaurant.” Wow, the world really needed to know that…but even better was an hour later when he tweeted “Secret Meeting Cancelled.” Gee, I guess we can all put our magic decoder rings away now.
The truth is that Twitter is all about brand management. The only problem is that it’s about the personal brand, not what ever you’re really trying to sell.
Best Twitter users:
TheRealDvorak
PopEyes (yes popeye’s chicken is doing brand management via twitter and better than anyone…)
Worst:
The aforementioned consultants you listed, although I’ll throw in the are especially painful when they are “Live Tweeting” from their own confernce, often when their presenting…