Life on Twitter: My Top 5 Take-Aways
Mike Jensen is the VP of Community Development at Daptiv. In this post he shares his thoughts about Twitter and what he has learned from using the much-hyped microblogging service. If you are already on Twitter, or are considering taking the plunge, you can follow this blog at www.twitter.com/mtwblog for updates on posts, links to useful resources and to join the conversation about managing work – follow Mike at www.twitter.com/mjtwit for an inside look at life in Seattle, working at Daptiv and being in the thick of building an enterprise community.
On the day when I have over 400 people following me on Twitter (yikes), it seems appropriate that I take a few moments to stop and think about the wonderful world of Twitter and what it means to me. I consider myself a newbie to all this, but in just a few short months I have learned a lot. At first, I was a bit skeptical of the whole Twitter thing… do I really want to know if Fred is eating a sandwich or if Sally just finished her workout? On top of that, do I really want to get a text message whenever stuff like that happens? But after digging in and seeing what it was all about, I realized that the value goes way beyond that. Even though I do enjoy getting a chuckle about personal elements of people’s lives that are shared on Twitter, there is also a lot of value in how I work day-to-day.
So, I have come up with my top 5 take-aways from my life on Twitter:
#5 Information Overload – As I have been taking it all in, I have amassed more than 650 people that I follow. Some that are friends, some that are brands, some that are news and many that just share cool stuff. With that comes a constant flow of information that at times can honestly be overwhelming. I can hit “refresh” on my Tweetie iPhone app every second and a new tweet comes in. On top of the general volume of information, the breadth is also amazing. If I am looking for something specific, it is rare that only a couple results come back. There are typically thousands, and that can be a bit tough to weed through it all.
#4 Get Organized – With all the information coming in, it has actually taught me to become more organized. There is not enough time to look at, or interact with, every tweet. Over time you are able to determine reliable sources of information, and know where to focus your time. Within Twitter itself, the new “Twitter Lists” feature has helped out a lot, even at my relatively small scale. Lists allow you to group like sources together in a way that makes sense to you. The great thing about Lists is that you can “subscribe” to other users’ Lists as well. This is probably more of a tip than a takeaway, but it is critically important. If you don’t get organized around the Twitter experience can/will suck a ton of time from your day.
#3 Humbled by the Community – I consider myself a pretty humble person already, but through this first phase of my life on Twitter, I am continually humbled by power of the community. Twitter reminds me that I don’t really know as much as I think. There are thousands of super smart people that have “been there, done that” and Twitter provides me with a way to find them, learn from them and hopefully utilize what they share to get better myself. Given items four and five above, I’m in awe of the people on Twitter that have thousands of followers, and thousands that they follow. I’m even more humbled by those that are engaged at that scale. With this, I am not talking about the brands that likely have a staff of people managing the back and forth, but more the folks that are thought leaders and just genuine about sharing with the community.
#2 Fun – I struggled to decide if this should be #1 or not. The fact is that in the information world, where knowledge and experience are key to success, Twitter has helped make that discovery process fun. Along the way, there are great opportunities to have conversations with people that I would normally not be able to. Given that I am a gadget guy, with my iPhone on at all times, the variety of social tools that leverage Twitter makes it a cool, fun experience. I think my Twitter client app is open more than any other app. The integration of Twitter into the “social web-world” is also cool to see. Sites like http://seattle.socialcentral.net/ are coming online that help aggregate people and tweets for certain locations so you can hear all that is happening in your neck of the woods.
…and the #1 takeaway…
#1 A Legitimate Work Tool – For some of you reading this, you might be reaching for the mouse to click away… or worse, for a tomato to throw at the screen, but hear me out. I’m not alone in thinking that Twitter has tangible benefits for how we work. In thinking about writing this, I actually came across a great piece from Darren Rowse (@problogger) that summarizes his 5 benefits of Twitter. In that he points out things like Research, Branding, Collaboration, Conversation, and Traffic… if you think about it, how are those NOT what work is all about. We have activities that require research and investigation, we want to promote and support our brand, we have to collaborate with other, we have to engage in meaningful conversation and we need to draw attention to our work/company. With Twitter’s robust API it will be intriguing to see how the “Twitterverse” can be leveraged even more for work activities in tools we use every day.
There you have it. I would love to hear what you think. Oh, you can also find me on twitter at @mjtwit.
Mike has been a part of the Daptiv team since January of 2000, initially with a focus on internal technical operations and scaling the datacenter. His role has evolved over the years to encompass customer support and community development. Prior to Daptiv, Mike managed the technology infrastructure for Weyerhaeuser’s Technology Center. Mike received his BA in Business Administration from Western Washington University.
