Musings

Reflections on life lived by a coast

  • Home
  • Travel
  • Yoga
You are here: Home / Social Media for Business / Twitter: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Twitter: Too Much of a Good Thing?

April 14, 2009 •

Has Twit­ter reached its peak of suc­cess, and is it head­ing now for the trough of dis­con­tent? Has it been over-hyped? I find myself won­der­ing.

Pos­si­ble signs of trou­ble:

  • The site has been too busy of late — I’ve been unable to com­plete tasks because their server was too busy. That dis­cour­ages me from return­ing.
  • Twit­ter is now serv­ing as a vec­tor for a worm. As a result one of my clients’ IT depart­ment is now block­ing access to Twit­ter from cor­po­rate PCs and lap­tops until they’ve fig­ured out how to pro­tect employ­ees from the mal­ware deliv­ered via Twit­ter.
  • Its search capa­bil­i­ties are too lim­ited when it comes to try­ing to find peo­ple with very com­mon names. (I have much bet­ter luck with LinkedIn.)
  • It’s not easy to sort the good stuff from the ran­dom tweets that are just annoy­ing…

I under­stand that a lot of well-respected pun­dits and media out­lets are pre­dict­ing it will be the next “killer app,” but I’m not yet con­vinced. Yes, I’m def­i­nitely a new­bie when it comes to Twit­ter — but I’d far rather talk to friends and fam­ily by phone or in per­son…

I can see its ben­e­fit for per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tions among friends and fam­ily, but as a busi­ness vehi­cle, where’s the value beyond short and sweet com­mu­ni­ca­tions?

Because so many tweets are writ­ten in SMS-like short­hand, I ques­tion the value of mon­i­tor­ing tweets for brand per­cep­tions… It’s likely to take a lot of labor-inten­sive human analy­sis to get much value out of the sen­ti­ments and per­cep­tions expressed there. (Blogs are prob­a­bly more valu­able as a source of cus­tomer or influ­encer insights for com­pa­nies that are invest­ing in “lis­ten­ing strate­gies.”)

For a more aca­d­e­mic dis­cus­sion, with the con­trar­ian point of view, check out Tom Dav­en­port’s blog post­ing at HBR. He def­i­nitely thinks that Twit­ter is just a fad.

I’m open to the notion that Twit­ter may be here to stay, but for the moment, I think it’s just part of the inter­per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tions mix…

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

© 2020 by Christine Thompson. All rights reserved. • Log in