A notable morning. First thing I checked messages on my mobile, and then realised that I checked new tweets before new emails. Mid-morning I had a
call with a guy who made contact through Twitter (he runs a small Cloud consulting firm and was interested in chatting about our experiences). Tomorrow I've a meeting with someone who runs a firm that appears to be best described as a dating agency for venture capital, and again is interested in hearing about our experiences (and contacted me via Twitter).
It's taken a while for me to work out how Twitter fits into my day-to-day. I struggled at first, not really seeing the point. Now it serves a few purposes: keeping track of what some of my current colleagues, suppliers and clients are up to; acting as a news source; being a place for the occasional smart-alek witticism; and providing a channel for announcing new things (like posts on my blog). I've a lots of interesting people following me, follow even more, and have well got past the initial confusing desire (borne of years of email use) to try and read everything. My Twitter status is also linked to my LinkedIn status.
I'm using TweetDeck on both PC and Android phone, and it's due to the latter that I checked Twitter first this morning.
Whilst I enjoy writing longer prose (you may have noticed!), the 140 character discipline is interesting. As a teenager I did a week of work experience at the Watford Observer, mostly spent precising long press releases into that sort of length of text. I always knew that training would come in handy one day.
Has it replaced email for me? Not a chance. Has it opened up new channels of communication? Undoubtedly. Could I succinctly describe the business or personal benefits of Twitter? Not in 140 characters or less…
mmitII 