Tap into the Vast Twitter Network

I’ve just been reading a great article by Clive Thompson on Twitter over at Wired.

He says that Twitter is giving members a sort of Sixth Sense about their community:

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

I agree with just about everything Clive says, but I feel there’s more to it. I feel that Twitter is actually a powerful real-world tool to help you learn, grow, and find your own perfect community. It’s not like an ordinary chat room or forum where you might like some of the members, but there will always be someone you just can’t stand, on Twitter you can pick and choose. Someone annoying you? Simply ditch them. Someone fascinate you? Follow some of their friends too so you can get a bigger picture.

Learn, inwardly-process from industry leaders in any industry

Like millions of other Twitter users, i initially signed up, took a look around, thought to myself “What an abject waste of time.” And left, not to return until some months later when someone I admired said “you are on Twitter aren’t you?”

I was happy, in that moment, that I had registered, and rushed over to see what I’d missed if someone so successful thought it was great.

Within hours I was hooked. It was the hooking up that hooked me, so to speak. Twitter is only ever going to be as good (to you personally) as the people you are hooked up with. For anyone who hasn’t yet taken the plunge, the procedure is that you hunt someone down and click ‘follow’ once you’re on their profile. This will enable you to read what they Tweet, but they won’t read what you Tweet unless you send them an @name message. You cannot send them d name messages, which are private, at all unless they decide to follow you back.

It doesn’t really matter if an industry-leader decides not to follow you back (or doesn’t notice that you’re following them because they have literally thousands of followers), but there are quite a few interesting people who will follow you back as a matter of course.

You can learn a great deal by following people who have knowledge you’d like to acquire. In the course of their day they frequently Tweet about what they’re doing, what they’ve discovered, and how they feel about a multitude of subjects. It’s like looking over their shoulder while they work.

Here are a few tweets from my Twitter feed:


Yes, it’s true that because the number of people using Twitter is doubling roughly every three weeks, they are suffering quite a few system crashes. This weekend has been particularly bad. But if you use a Twitter client like Twhirl (my personal favorite) you can bypass most of it and continue to Tweet happily, although you won’t be able to add new contacts or update your profile (who cares?). While outages are always annoying I can’t help thinking everyone is a little hard on Twitter admin. With usage at the level it is, I think they’re doing an good job for a great service.