On the Usefulness of Twitter
Photo by Ross Mayfield.
Yes, I use Twitter.
In some circles, that would mean I'm up on social media. In others, it's a confession. After eight months I haven't broken one "tweet" per day so I'm still sitting on the fence but I'm starting to see the benefit of receiving the updates.
I'm not talking about office coffee complaints or what your cat just did. There's definitely a fair amount of that but here's what I think is worth your attention.
- Local events and conferences. Web-related conferences like the upcoming IXDA get a lot of Twitter time so it's a good way to stay on top of early bird tickets, etc.
- Local news and entertainment. Geekery isn't all you'll hear. Other things like restaurant recommendations for Dine Out Vancouver or opinions on the latest opera, Carmen get some air, too.
- Keeping up with colleagues. People who aren't directly involved with some sort of marketing don't tend to tweet much but you can still find out about their latest projects or share ideas.
The uses above don't even touch the marketing benefits which are the big draw for most Twitter users. And for visualization geeks like myself, there's another bonus: Twitter provides a very interesting dataset to work with.
