A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he heard, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard;
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?
It’s been a while since
I posted about Twitter, my favorite social networking tool, so I thought it might be interesting to compare how I used it in the early days—that would be two years ago—and how I use it now. For the first year or so, I thought of Twitter as an experiment, but it’s really evolved as quite a useful tool. Not in the way I first imagined, though. As it happens, I rarely tweet, and when I do it is usually a retweet of a particularly interesting article or something amusing I feel compelled to send it along. The real use of Twitter, for me, is not in attracting followers, but in compiling useful, personally relevant information feeds.
Most of the users that I follow are mainstream media—my favorite columnists and publications. I rely on their Twitter feeds to make sure I’m aware of where the planet is melting down and what I need to know about the business world. I’ve found my twitter news feeds to be far more reliable in telling me what I need and want to know than the editors of news media. I rarely read packaged media these days, and even their websites get little more than a quick scan of headlines from me.
I also follow all of my clients that tweet publicly. Their twitter feeds help me to know what’s going on in their business and what’s important to them. It may not be directly useful in my legal advice to them, but I do like to know what’s important to them.
Finally, I follow a few trusted sources of information in my professional field. I’ve found a couple of nonprofit and tax lawyers who regularly post about what’s happening, and what they think is important to their clients. Much of that is duplicative of what I read in the legal periodicals, but it’s fed to me on twitter in a modality more suited to my work and learning style (and attention span). Some of the most useful twitter feeds I’ve added lately are those that have been re-tweeted to me. I’m fascinated by most of the folks I follow, and they feed me even more great leads. How efficient is that.
Who do I NOT follow? I’ve un-followed all social friends who twitter—there’s no band-width in my head for following narcissistic feeds of a social schedule or attempts at being clever. I get updates from close friends and family members only on my Facebook page (and, on that network, I also hide messages from everyone who posts more than a couple of times a day.) In an era of information overload, I ruthlessly cull out of my information stream all useless chatter that crowds out what’s important. I also don’t follow any retailers. I get enough spam; I certainly don’t want tweets trying to sell me stuff.
I read tweets only once or twice a day, generally during my commute. Although I pick them up on my droid, I’m not alerted by incoming messages. Twitter is a channel of what I want, but only when I want it, and it doesn’t interrupt.
With all that said, it’s a wonder anyone follows me—there’s about a 3 to 1 ratio of people who follow me, to those I follow. I suspect that’s because my posts are so infrequent followers don’t think to shut me out—but not because I’m a wise old bird.
