Why I Love Twitter and Became ProBlogger/YouTube Famous

Last month, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net asked his Twitter followers — that includes me — why they loved Twitter. He took those responses and turned them into a video slideshow on YouTube enhanced with a rocking instrumental track.

Check me out around 4:03 AND AGAIN at 4:17. Yeah, that’s right — twice. Don’t worry. I’ll sign autographs at the end of this post. I just couldn’t capture my thoughts in 140 characters.

While most people highlighted Twitter’s ability to create a virtual water cooler or bring a bit of social to the desktop of those who work solo at home, my response was simply this:

I love twitter b/c it keeps me up to date on the latest happenings and makes it easy to share interesting finds.

Before going a little deeper to say…

Most people I talk to are outside of the contacts I have in real life, so I get exposed to things I may not have seen otherwise.

To expand on what I twittered — see, I told you I couldn’t keep it to 140 characters — Twitter has thus far been my forum for geeking out and releasing my blogosphere-hugging link monkey. It satisfies my fear of missing something by allowing me to listen in and respond to the conversations of hundreds of individuals that I admire/watch/read but never meet for coffee.

The real value in Twitter for me is being able to listen in on the thoughts of like-minded Internet junkies. It’s like being a talking fly on the wall in a Web 2.0 startup or a major blog. I find things on Twitter that I wouldn’t catch anywhere else, and I follow others who have interesting things to say even if I can’t keep their blog in my RSS reader due to the overload.

Twitter is also my release for early-adopter-itis. Despite what the walking-two-miles-in-the-snow, non-Internet types might believe, friends from my own generation have not completely jumped aboard the twit-train or the Internet. While Facebook has gone mainstream, I am, for the most part, alone among my off-line friends in my Twitter usage and social network-aholism. I often explain Internet memes to friends and co-workers, but in Twitter, I get to join a cloud of people that know what’s up online. Is Twitter the Cheers bar of the Internet future?

I haven’t gotten the return value of a Scoble just yet due to the “friend divide” that Scoble defined. My growing army of followers don’t yield the huge number of responses that a ProBlogger can amount, but regardless, I have found value in Twitter because the people I follow keep me in the loop and make me, as Scoble said, “smarter, richer, cooler, and funnier” — and better looking.

8 Comments

  1. @Brian Moreau:

    Well, you should give it another try, Brian. Twitter is one of those services that you don’t really utilize or understand until your immerse yourself in it. The more people you follow, the more diverse your tweets and the more you engage other users, the more value Twitter actually has.

    Call it my “Field of Dreams” theory, but when you tweet like there are people there to listen, they come to you. I think Twitter might be one of the fastest ways to grow and expand your network. Rather than thinking of it as updating your status, treat it like static IM shouts, and I think you might see it differently.

  2. @Brian Moreau:

    Well, you should give it another try, Brian. Twitter is one of those services that you don’t really utilize or understand until your immerse yourself in it. The more people you follow, the more diverse your tweets and the more you engage other users, the more value Twitter actually has.

    Call it my “Field of Dreams” theory, but when you tweet like there are people there to listen, they come to you. I think Twitter might be one of the fastest ways to grow and expand your network. Rather than thinking of it as updating your status, treat it like static IM shouts, and I think you might see it differently.

  3. I love Twitter. I wish I had responded to Darren’s tweet. He’s a cool guy. Twitter has completely changed my social circle. In addition it has brought a bunch of attention to my music blog. Congrats on being in the video!

  4. I love Twitter. I wish I had responded to Darren’s tweet. He’s a cool guy. Twitter has completely changed my social circle. In addition it has brought a bunch of attention to my music blog. Congrats on being in the video!

  5. @Walt Ribeiro:

    Thanks, Walt. Twitter really is a great way to get attention. I’ve enjoyed being able to share and discuss my posts with others on Twitter.

  6. @Walt Ribeiro:

    Thanks, Walt. Twitter really is a great way to get attention. I’ve enjoyed being able to share and discuss my posts with others on Twitter.

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