Twitter – A Possible Support Circle?
Filed Under Efficiency Tips, Trade ToolsAfter being on Twitter for many moons, I am starting to finally understand the true potential it can hold.
It is true, Twitter is huge time sucking blackhole void of time; however, Twitter does have its fantastic community aspects. For example, the other day I had a quick development question. I could have went to a forum to post the question. I could have emailed a colleague. Instead I reached for Twitter.
Quicker than IM, Email, or a forum, I reached out to over 100 of my peers and immediately started a conversation. This is a support group at the speed of light.
If you are debating on joining Twitter, my I suggest giving it a try using Twhirl, and if you aren’t already, feel free to follow me.
14 Responses to “Twitter – A Possible Support Circle?”
[…] Twitter – A Possible Support Circle? (Max Pool) […]
“Quicker than IM, Email, or a forum”
If you have 100 followers. If you’re not that popular these are still your best options.
It is great for the peer feedback but it also has more barrier to entry for those that haven’t used it as long or aren’t as popular (as Mike said). What suggestions would you give for people starting out to obtain sort of communication?
@Mike
Thanks for making me feel unpopular – I thought 100 people was doing well… 😉
I do however disagree, the time it would take to spin up IM conversations or the wait time between email responses is much more than the 12 seconds it took for me to Twitter the problem.
For me, Twittering is a lot like text messaging. Some might ask “why not just call them”, to which I reply – because there is no commitment to answer my plea for help, and thus I should not engage everyone I know in a level of communication that disrupts them.
If someone answers…cool…if not…that’s cool too…
@Ryan
The first step is engaging yourself in a community (whether Twitter, forums, email groups, etc.). You really don’t know what (or who) you have until you are ankle deep in these communities.
I participate in a few different communities, and I am finding that my Twitter community is by far the fastest responding.
So I would say, just surround yourself with people you want to surround yourself with, get involved in the communication, and in a few short weeks people will know you and will be willing to help out.
@Max
100 is great! I have 2 and one of those is my mom 😉
Sorry MAX, I hope I didn’t come off as snide in my first comment.
I completely agree with you that twitter is a awesome tool but for most of us it’s just not an option yet. I still depend on the kindness of strangers by using forums. I very rarely use IM or email for the same commitment reason you stated above.
In case, anyone wants to know the sure fire way to be followed by others (including myself) is to get involved in the conversations using the @mpool (or @username) context.
I don’t usually blindly follow people because I don’t want conversation to get lost in a sea of tweets, but if people actually are conversing I will be interested…
LOL, Mike – no worries – I need to be knocked off my soap box now and again… 😉
Ack! My twitter addiction has been publicly revealed! 😉
What twitter lacks is context. True, you *can* follow the thread if you pay attention but the twitter lifespan of a conversation is about 15 minutes (about the same amount of time it takes Britney to screw up after going out in the public). If you have a lot of twitter activity (twitivity?) then the thread gets lost. I would like to maybe see a view in some twitter client that threaded the conversation (I think there’s a couple of sites out there that do this, but not very successfully probably because there’s not enough metadata about a thread).
@Bil
Good point, you do catch a lot of “one-sided” conversations with Twitter as a result of not following everyone on earth. That is a very frustrating part of Twitter and why it only suits one particular type of communication need.
[…] Max Pool talks about how Twitter can be A Possible Support Circle. […]
[…] to tweeting their response on Twitter to anybody who will listen. From a simple status update to a possible support circle to a tribe building ecosystem, Twitter has become another pillar of the fast-evolving web. In his […]
I am locked out of twitter. it’s my second account, and i cannot go on as administrator, i have asked twitter for help and do not receive an answer. any suggestions?
Yup buddy.online community forums are bringing a great off line change in the society.