The reluctant Twitterer's dilemma

I started a Twitter blog not that long ago. In contrast to something like Facebook (at present), I can have a public micro-blog and be anonymous if I want to be. I only tweet about technical stuff I'm working on, rather than what I ate for dinner or what's on TV, and follow friends on a different account or via RSS. Mostly my tweets and feedback help keep me motivated without spending the time I would on a full length blog post (or coming here for that matter :).

It's interesting to see people filtering for keywords and just automatically following you if you use those words (surely in an attempt to gain followers). After the first post where I mentioned Ubuntu, I suddenly had a spike in followers, but all of them were following thousands of people and have never tweeted back to me.

I think Twitter has much more value as a conversational tool and to some extent (thanks to services such as TwitterFeed) an RSS reader replacement (social feeds if you will).

I've tried using it as a "microblogging" tool, and to be frank it helped me realise I was pretty boring. If you have a super-duper interesting life (e.g. if you're Stephen Fry) then sure, otherwise I feel that it, combined with search and hashtags, has much more potential for people to discuss things publically.

I was kept awake at night racked in guilt by my refusal to join twitter; but lo! Slate absolved me and my conscience is light as a feather once again.

But wait! It doesn't look like that dude will absolve me for not being on Facebook - oh well, I'll just have to learn to live with my moral miasma.

This is yet another in a long string of articles that are getting the question exactly backwards. The wrong question: what do I do with Twitter (or "a blog" or "e-mail" or ...")? The right question: I have something to say; what is the best medium to say it in?

Thus, the successful media tap into an unfulfilled need, and meet that need well.

So, should you use Twitter? Yes, if you have something to accomplish that Twitter helps you accomplish. Otherwise, no.

(And the real answer to all those hordes of people asking, "I have a blog; what should I write about?" is "If you have nothing to say, then you don't need a blog.")

I was really only drawn to twitter following Guy Kawasaki's talk on Jelly about how important it is for companies to have a twitter account to answer random inquiries about their products and services.

Other than that, I've been rather reluctant......it seems like a great way to prevent companies or public figures from writing 'TLDR' posts - but why would you want to TLDR your own friends?

I use Twitter because I don't have enough to say that I can adequately express in a blog. I think Twitter is a fad, but I don't think it's useless. Either way, good luck finding me on Facebook.