Friday, April 24, 2009

Much ado about Twitter

Since Oprah's venture into twitter last week, there has been much ado about twitter. The Mesa Issues twitter has been going strong, though I admit that we are still trying to figure out all of the insider language and the nuances.

I am probably a bad twitter friend, since we sometimes forget to check in, and I didn't even tweet the posts from yesterday (oops). Also, while I do try to add everyone who follows us, there is a lot of skepticism on if they really care about what is going on in Mesa. If so, awesome, but "padding the stats" is suspected. Admittedly, I was just excited to learn that we are up to almost 500 followers - yay!

I still remain shocked about how many tweets are about how awesome twitter is, which I equate to people blogging about how much blogging rocks, or someone going on the news to talk about how amazing and useful television is, but hey, what do I know?

2 comments:

Trudy W Schuett said...

I've been on Twitter for a year, but only active for a couple of months. It reminds me of the early days of blogging, where people would set up a blog, then tell all their friends and end up abandoning it altogether a couple of months later.

I'm told I don't tweet enough. But it's hard to get interested when you really don't know most of the people or where they're coming from!

And no, it's not obligatory to follow everyone who follows you, I've un-followed some people who really weren't twittering for public consumption. ;>)

BTW- I Tweet as: trudywschuett

Happy trails!

Sarah said...

There's not too much to worry about with insider language and nuances. It looks like everything I would have suggested (use #, follow back, be relevant) is what you are already doing.

I just looked at your first page of followers and at a quick glance, maybe 30% have even a tenuous connection to the blog (say, some connection to Arizona or interested in politics). From what I have seen with others who use Twitter and center around one or two topics, that's a pretty good ratio. I'm happy when 30% of my followers have some connection to something I talk about - real estate, photography, jewelry, Arizona, politics, whatever.

As for the buzz where people get on Twitter to say how great Twitter is, hopefully that will die down soon. I can't imagine that it won't.

-Sarah ( @scraparcs )