Coping with the ephemeral nature of Twitter

Two years ago, I scoffed at Twitter. A few months later I experimented with it, and now I consider it an essential communications channel. Like many bloggers, however, I’ve noticed two things: a sharp drop in my own posting frequency, and a huge backlog of unread posts in my feed reader.

I tend to read blog posts when people link to them on Twitter. Recently, two of my friends wrote about related issues that have been on my mind: the time zone problem and the evanescent nature of Twitter.

In a recent post, Joe Thornley said:

“In effect, my world through the lens of Twitter has shrunk to encompass only those people who are online at the same time as me. So, I’ve lost sight of those people whose workdays and online times don’t overlap with mine. They are invisible to me and I too am invisible to them.”

I know what he means; I often miss tweets from friends in Europe and Australia, unless I’m suffering from insomnia, in which case I often lull myself back to sleep via Twitterific on the iPhone. Here are a few solutions:

1. Subscribe to the RSS feeds of Twitter people whose posts you don’t want to miss. (See image.)
2. Visit the Twitter home page of your favourite Twitterati to catch up on their posts.
3. Create a column in Tweetdeck for Twitter friends in distant parts of the world, so they’re grouped in one place.

 
None of these solutions puts you in the same time zone, but you won’t feel as though you’re missing important content.

As for the evanescent nature of Twitter, Mitch Joel wrote recently:

“Twitter has become the place to tell people when you like something. It's quick, fast and painless. And, that's the problem. Is it really a compliment when someone tweets about you, or is it the ultimate insult?”

His post made me think about the nature of blogging vs. Twitter. If I want a message to have some staying power, I should make the effort to blog about it. Sure, I can tweet it, but in a few minutes that tweet will be gone from most followers’ screens (if they saw it at all), whereas the blog post will live as long as I do. In most cases, I will post a tweet that links back to the blog post, thereby reaching a broader audience.

For me, Twitter is an essential channel, but I always have to keep in mind that in the larger scheme of things, the stuff I post on Twitter is here and gone in short order, and may not be seen at all by those in other time zones. What do you think?

Comments

[Victoria Fenner]

For me, Twitter is a lot like radio. If you're there, you hear/see it. If not, you don't. I think a lot of people have trouble with Twitter because they are used to coming to the internet to READ. Twitter is unusual because it's a time-based medium (like TV and radio) that you read (like a book or a newspaper). For those of us who have worked in radio/TV with newswires, it's not so odd. We always worked with time-based text. For the rest, well, it's a whole new way of doing things.

Think of it as Reuters or Canadian Press for Everyone.

[Mike Cameron]

Being fairly new to Twitter, I'm not sure how prevalent a certain HootSuite feature is, but I do like how HS strings replies together. If you're managing a corporate Twitter account that follows hundreds, it's a godsend. And, thanks for introducing me to Tweetdeck. It sounds great!

[Cyrus Mavalwala]

Good point about colleagues/friends in different time zones. I find Twitter can be almost unmanageable without the proper tools. Thankfully, there seems to be an application for just about everything you'd want to do now.

[Donna Papacosta]

Thanks to all for your comments. Radio is an interesting comparison, Victoria. Of course I like to listen to podcasts of radio shows that I miss!
I will check out HootSuite, Mike.
And yes, Cyrus, the number of apps related to Twitter is growing like crazy.

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