Ade in Business

When I first saw Twitter I thought it was a complete waste of time, found it technologically unimpressive, and was positive it had no viability as a “real” business.

I’m still not completely convinced otherwise, but am starting to see the appeal.

I think my initial skepticism was largely founded on the way Twitter had been explained to me, and the examples I’d seen in conjunction. I don’t see any appeal in it as an instant messaging platform (my Pidgin client works far better for this purpose), or as a way to peek in on friends in real-time (I don’t really care that you’re eating leftover fish tacos right now).

But I do see appeal in Twitter as a micro-blogging platform — a medium to publish relevant content, much as you would with a personal or company blog. The content limitations of Twitter (no post can exceed 140 characters) free me from the pressure of having to write a lengthy, time-consuming post. If I want to write about an event or interesting article I can do so in under 30 seconds. It’s rare that I can put together a coherent blog post in under 30 minutes.

However, using Twitter as a micro-blogging platform might not be a good thing. The most obvious problem is that generally speaking, content under 140 characters is going to be of far less quality than a lengthier blog post that has a lot more time behind it. And there seems to be a growing list of bloggers whose blogging time and mind share has been cannibalized by Twitter. There are signs that it’s done the same to me, although I can’t really use it completely as an excuse since I wasn’t really posting that frequently before using Twitter.

If you haven’t looked at Twitter at all, or haven’t given it a second glance since you scoffed at how ridiculous it was, I encourage you to give it another look. There’s some value there … I think.  And you can follow me here or subscribe to my RSS feed.

If you have given it a second look, I’m curious to know: what made you decide to start using it? Or what made you decide firmly that you’ll stay far, far away?