Time for Twitter?

Like many people out there, many thousands of people, I’ve been using Twitter now for a while and it is getting to that point where it is no longer something ‘fun’ to check up on to see what’s going on, but actually quite a burden and time consuming to keep tabs on! There are some great tools out there like TweetDeck and HootSuite (which I use, more on that later) which help to manage Twitter but it has become quite difficult to find the time.

The reason email is so successful is because you can queue the emails to read later as a recipient; I’m finding this difficult with Twitter. To the extent that I’ve stopped following some good Twitterers like Guy Kawasaki due to the mass of updates they make which makes tracking difficult!

I’m still following Mashable but that’s on the borderline too – where is the line drawn between being useful and being a burden?

When I first joined Twitter, it was great to see short excerpts on what other people were linking to like articles and releases. It is a shame that the most simple of things become difficult. Just look at the number of issues Facebook is having right now. I read a report that the sign-up rate is slowing down and the return rate (i.e. logging back on) is dropping, both signs that people are not interested like they used to be.

And this is when the playing field starts levelling and other, possibly better, innovative players enter the market. Just look at MySpace. Still going strong yet with a fraction of the market it used to have.

So am I still going to use Twitter? Damn right. But perhaps not as often as I’d like or as often as I’d used to.

About those Twitter tools….

TweetDeck - I like to use this to keep tabs of Tweets. It sits on your desktop and alerts you when a Tweet arrives. You can also create vertical windows within the application to keep tabs on conversations. In addition you can also log into your Facebook account though I’ve not found that feature too useful.

HootSuite - A fantastic little tool primarily due to 2 things; you can use its URL shorting service, which gives you access to click-stats and you can monitor/Tweet from more than one Twitter account. Great if you have a personal and business one!

There are loads of other tools out there but hey, here’s 2 for starters!

Depesh

Controlling the mass of Tweets in Twitter!

Being new to using Twitter I’ve finally managed (as others have already done) to find a tool to aggregate Twitter feeds – TweetDeck! There are probably loads of similar tools out there but this seems the most popular with fellow Twitters!

Any other good ones out there?

I’m tweeting! Twitter’s growth and possible fall…

Twitter – what is it all about? I’ve been thinking that for the past year. Why waste time sending 140 words or less!

Actually its more of a social notification tool. A great way to receive up to the minute thoughts and opinions on anything out there!

http://search.twitter.com is probably the most useful part of it, since you can search for ‘real-time’ discussions.

If you wanted to search the news as it was written or recorded at a particular point in time, you could search ‘Obama Iraq’ in a search engine to see what was written.

Alternatively you can search Twitter and find out what is being discussed, RIGHT NOW. That’s right now as in your time, as you’re sitting there reading this, not my time, at the time I’m actually writing this. Great thing is the last post I just read is going to be different to the one you will see on the same topic. They are the latest in the long list of discussions (following his speech today on withdrawing from Iraq). A discussion is dynamic.

In summary, Twitter is fantastic for leveraging the here and now, what the online world is thinking or writing about any one thing. Can’t fit it into 140 characters? Not a problem, Twitter compresses long URLs into shorter ones to fit! Google sees the value of this…

For me the next big platform is how Twitter turns this profitable. A subscription service would no doubt alienate most users, advertising may annoy many but who knows? Is Twitter about to take on Google to some level? Google did, after all, make a bid on Twitter which was rejected. A wise decision? Perhaps. One thing is for sure, Google thinks it is important enough to spend time on! Is Google about to launch an app which is the same, but better? Will it try another takeover bid?

For all that’s great about Twitter, I think it needs a big injection of Google (that is, Google’s technology):

We’re sorry, but something went wrong.

We’ve been notified about this issue and we’ll take a look at it shortly.

Sorry? You have probably 10m users and you’re sorry? A simple search repeatedly brought up this error, it is not the first. Twitter just cannot cope with the amount of traffic it generates. This is where Google really could add value. Many don’t think it is right for Google to monopolise, but for me, the simple Web user, I love Google! iGoogle, Google Maps (and mobile), Google Analytics, Trends, Web Optimiser – the list of useful apps Google provides is vast. Yes competition is healthy but if Google continues to provide such fantastic services whilst being arguably number one then I’m all for it!

Depesh