Comments on: I Just Can’t Get Into Twitter

By: pissed off

pissed off — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:19:56 +0000

I HATE HATE HATE HATE Twitter. I have never been so frsutrated trying to create an account. They have NO real HELP desk. Just an archives with topics to choose. I cannot email someone at Twitter and ask for help. I have created three accounts and it won’t recognize any of them. It list things I DON’T want listed and won’t let me get rid of them. So, I deactivate that account and try to start a new account and it won’t let me.
IT is the MOST f_____ up system I have EVER seen. It stinks!

By: Mike Kear

Mike Kear — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:05:51 +0000

I have never been interested in social networking sites, because it seemed to me that the VAST majority of the “friends” are actually people just wanting to collect other names for no other reason than to have the biggest collection of “friends”.

Twitter only seemed to be an even more trivial time-waster to me.

Then my attention was grabbed last week when i was talking to a contract CF developer – far busier than i am – who said he got most of his business though Facebook and Twitter.

HUH???????

He reckoned that he gets most of his work because of his social networking.

NOW i’m interested. If what he does could be applied in my case too, then it would make a significant difference to my life. If my life worked the same way he did, I could say good bye to all those blood-sucking useless, do-nothing recruiters. I could charge less for what I do, and get more in my pocket at the same time.

So i’m interested in finding if anyone else gets actual dollars-in-the-pocket work-in-the-order-book benefit out of the social networking sites, or is this just an aberration in this one guy’s case.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:51:17 +0000

I really struggled with Twitter too but I have found two good ways to use it. The first is for providing a different notification mechanism (like SMS, but thru the “tubes”) and we use it to announce upcoming maintenance windows for our service.

The other thing that I found twitter is great for is using it to stay on top of temporal events. My first real following was during the Mumbai terrorist attack and I’ve used it at cf.Objective() and I’m using it today at WordCamp SF. You can track events through the use of an IRC-like “hashtag” such as #wordcamp. To be able to have what is effectively a “side conversation” during the day or coordinating with where people are going for drinks/dinner/etc is really useful.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:49:14 +0000

It’s easy to quickly share links & pics and see at a glance what’s being talked about today. I agree that it is all about who you follow and skimming for what interests you. It’s easy to interact in real time with whoever is in your stream.

For people who don’t follow your blog, you can introduce a topic and lure them in.

By: Todd Rafferty

Todd Rafferty — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:17:26 +0000

Do I read everything that everyone that I’m following write? No. I scan. There’s little nuggets of information to have now and then in 140 characters.

I use twitter to social pow-wow with other CF Developers and have a good chuckle now and again. I sometimes get useful links, thoughts and hints. Occasionally I search for Railo/CF, now and then you come across someone that needs help with something small or whatever.

If it’s something larger than 140 chars that I need to talk to someone, I’ll use tinypaste.com or point them at a google document. Ideally, if I had a blog, I’d write up a blog post and point them at it.

By: Jeff Beeman

Jeff Beeman — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:05:31 +0000

Twitter for me is two things…Yes it’s a social contact site for the random thought but it’s also a great business tool especially if you are in sales or sales related business. You can send quick info out to a large group and not have to give a ton of detial just send them a link to the detail. Not into the social networkingl thing no problem but if your in business and need to stay in touch then you might want to reconsider.

By: senocular

senocular — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:00:23 +0000

Yeah, you just need to follow the right people. For example, there are a LOT of /extremely/ intelligent people out there following me – likely because I’ve never posted on twitter a day in my life. ;)

By: Matt Williams

Matt Williams — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:31:25 +0000

I’m with you Steve. I can’t really even find the time to give twitter a try.

My work place doesn’t allow personal email, IM, etc., so no twitter there. At home, I’m online for contract work and some personal interests. I’ll use IM sometimes then, but wouldn’t want constant messages from twitter then either.

I keep up with blogs via Google Reader, something I can pull up when I have a few minutes. It goes back to push vs pull convenience. I like to pull updates when it works for me, not have others constantly pushing it to me.

Maybe I’m just missing out, but I haven’t even gotten into texting yet, though I see how it can be useful at times.

By: Steve Brownlee

Steve Brownlee — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:46:35 +0000

@Joe: Entirely possible.

By: Joe Zack

Joe Zack — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:44:12 +0000

Sounds like you’re following the wrong people