I sometimes look at how people interact with Twitter and it surprises me to see how few understand take advantage of the “instantaneousity†of this tool.
Let’s take my fiancée for example. She rarely goes on Twitter and when she does she usually spends 5 minutes scrolling down to see what the 5 people she follows were saying up to 10 days ago. That is not the way Twitter was intended to be.
Twitter is a tool designed to capture the present, not the past.
Don’t bother looking back at what happened on Twitter hours or days ago because it is obsolete. Focus on what’s happening now!
Of course one can argue that you can do whatever you want on Twitter and that is your right to look at what people were tweeting last month. Sure it is, but how relevant is this information now?
How do you use Twitter?
5 replies on “Twitter: It’s About Now!”
Real time is great for the who/what/when/where sort of tweet or tweeter. I follow some of them and check Twitter many times a day looking for those updates. I also follow several informational tweeters and use it as more of an RSS replacement. I scan the tweets and favorite interesting items for more in depth reading at a later time. Who says you have to be one or the other. In the imortal words of Meat Loaf…I want it all. I want it now. (And sometimes I want it again later too)
I can see what you’re getting at, but surely some items in the Twitter stream remain relevant regardless of when one dips into it? : ))
I think the biggest problem that many new users have with Twitter is that they find it quite hard to dig through the clutter and to find the people who actually have something interesting to say.
That was certainly my experience when I first started using it (and still is, to some extent)
i think the biggest problem is most people still use facebook than twitter. and many people don’t familiar with twitter.
at my country, facebook is more prevalent than twitter. my friends didn’t use twitter so it s quite hard to ask for help :(