so, I was thinking about twitter… and social media in general… a mistake most so-called experts make is thinking of little updates as broadcasting, when really it’s backchannel. You have a hundred twitter followers that also follow you, you’re inside that circle of people, messaging them things that are irrelevant or unimportant to the rest of the world, but that they might find useful/entertaining/funny. Non-sequiturs. The useful information that you get from the chatter are the things you wouldn’t have found otherwise. Most importantly, it’s behind the scenes.

That’s true for most twitter users, I’d bet. Then there are the “experts” who think of twitter as a place to sell stuff; it’s a free way to shout things about your product, after all. The problem is, when seen in the light of the above: all advertising on twitter is effectively noise. If your product is good, it will get word of mouth (actually, you’ll get more word of mouth if it’s bad or easy to make fun of; see snuggies, slap-chop, etc.).

Posted by Matt on 2009-11-25T00:00:00Z GMT