Twitter is us. The good, the bad, the inspiring, the demoralizing, the petty, the grand, the global, the local, the spam, the scams, the community of trust and help and resources...it’s all us. Twitter is us, in all our grandeur, power, weakness, strengths, passions, inspirations and...not. That’s its power. Our power.
Real-time comes with a real price. Real-time is like the cool new friend with the cool clothes and car. Yeah, they’re flashy. They’re cool.
They’re...real-time. Real-time is immediate, instant, global. Flashy-y-y-y! But connection and community are built together, one conversation at a time, one mistake and lesson learned at a time, connected over a long-time. That last part is key. Connected. Over a long period of time. Weave ‘em together and you have a tapestry worth keeping. But, kept separate they are just...fragments of time. Real-time, though.
We change. Twitter’s power is its power, our power, of self-discovery in our hands or fingers and aps and community. That produces, reveals, a lot of change, disruption, churn. It’s ok. In fact, it’s great...over time. See above point.Twitter is still a cocktail party. See above. Conversations bore. They excite. We lose interest. We get distracted. We get obsessive. We get silly, argumentative. At the end of the day...it’s still a cocktail party. It’s what happens AFTER, ELSEWHERE, that makes cocktail parties worth our time. One cocktail party does not make a social season. Even IF that cocktail party goes on 24 hours a day.
Be nice.
More conversation, less promotion. Someone tweeted recently that they saw fewer conversations. I looked closer. Nearly all the tweets were links to something, like headlines. And those were mine....
It seemed the conversation had deteriorated into shouting.
Kinda like what happens as a cocktail party grows larger...and louder.
But, Twitter is us. We can change. We can change the conversation, the setting, the tone, the place even. Tools like Lists and Groups help build cozy rooms for those conversations worth developing and remembering.
Twitter is only one tool. One tool a social media campaign does not make. Blogs, YouTube, Vidler, Vimeo, Facebook, podcasts....in-person networking, hand-written notes, phone calls, personal visits, dinners...a product worth talking about, employees engaged and passionate...all are important tools to reach your personal and professional goals.
You don’t have to Twitter, every day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Silence makes us look, smart, thoughtful. And a little rest for the brain can make us speak, tweet, smartly.
What’s yours? Or, it’s not always about me. Twitter is a wonderful listening tool. At a glance, a whisper, you can hear the world. I’m learning. I’m listening. What’s your lessons learned with Twitter?
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