Oh Jeezus. Now I'm supposed to join Twitter b/c it's such a good marketing tool for myself? Do we go through this cycle with every single new social networking venue or what?
That makes even less sense than just about every other social networking venue out there, I think. At best, about the only sense it makes that I can think of is the trivial "being connected to your social network is good, and twitter might enhance that connection", and even that's a stretch.
"Celebrities have people following their every move and reporting on trivial things. Twitter lets people follow your every move and report upon your trivial doings. Therefore twitter makes you a celebrity."
Of course, this logic can also be used to prove that all men are Socrates, but that's beside the point. ;)
Actually, the illusory "it looks like I am interacting with you but really I am just broadcasting" nature of Twitter works quite well from a marketing standpoint, in theory.
But in practice, the idea gives me hives. Then again, most marketing strategies that attempt to take advantage of social networking do.
I used Twitter for awhile and fail to see how it could be used as a good marketing tool for an individual who's not already famous. It seems to me that the majority of subscribers to your feed would be people who were already aware of you and your work.
Twitter is my least favorite of all the various social networking things. There are very few people, if any, whose every move I want to know. Even friends -- the minutia of what they're eating and the color of their outfit and thickness of their snot -- not that interesting to me. Perhaps if people used it in a way that WAS interesting to me I'd like it more. I actually do enjoy the one-line status updates of facebook, although some of that can be pretty boring too. Perhaps it's more tolerable because unless you go searching, you only see each person's most recent update, rather than all of them.
I like twitter. There are several bloggers that I follow and they twit (tweet?) whenever they post a new blog. I find it useful in that regard. And I use it, too, mostly as a novel toy to keep track of and to twitter at my friends.
But I'm kind of a web geek, so I find all these social networking sites fun.
Well, I like twitter because it sends text alerts to my phone.
I only have a vague idea of what a blog reader is. I tried to use the google one and I couldn't figure out how to add blogs that I like to read, only what was already on their list. Same with Yahoo!
Plus the internet UI on my phone sucks. So I get twitter alerts via text and then I know a blog I want to read has been posted and I can go to it later when I'm at a computer.
I use Google Reader all the time and add blogs by clicking on their RSS feeds. I use iGoogle, and put Reader on it so I can just pull up the page and see all the blogs I have.
I do tweet, but primarily prefer Reader for its interface and power.
I'm testing it out for you so you won't have to. ;-) Just cuz their marketing tells us it's a good marketing tool doesn't make it so. I'll keep you posted.
It's the marketing equivalent of the esoteric financial derivatives that have recently been blowing up: we don't know what they actually do or if they are worth anything, but if we tell people they are Magic Beans 2.0, maybe enough people will believe it to give the early promoters enough money to become comfortably well-off.
That makes even less sense than just about every other social networking venue out there, I think. At best, about the only sense it makes that I can think of is the trivial "being connected to your social network is good, and twitter might enhance that connection", and even that's a stretch.
Of course, this logic can also be used to prove that all men are Socrates, but that's beside the point. ;)
But in practice, the idea gives me hives. Then again, most marketing strategies that attempt to take advantage of social networking do.
I for one do not twit.
I used Twitter for awhile and fail to see how it could be used as a good marketing tool for an individual who's not already famous. It seems to me that the majority of subscribers to your feed would be people who were already aware of you and your work.
But I'm kind of a web geek, so I find all these social networking sites fun.
I only have a vague idea of what a blog reader is. I tried to use the google one and I couldn't figure out how to add blogs that I like to read, only what was already on their list. Same with Yahoo!
Plus the internet UI on my phone sucks. So I get twitter alerts via text and then I know a blog I want to read has been posted and I can go to it later when I'm at a computer.
I do tweet, but primarily prefer Reader for its interface and power.
Cheers, ;-)
Or in otherwords: it is bullshit.
Or yet another attempt to monetize social networking apart from user fees and ad revenues.
I can't believe I'm the first person to make that comment, however.