Trying out Twitter

I finally couldn't stand it any longer – I had to check out this thing called Twitter. Got sick of hearing people rave about social media and figured I better see what all the noise is about.

OK, I'm now officially Twitterized. So far, I've been: confused, curious, frustrated, delighted, bored, surprised, engrossed, distracted, annoyed, stumped and intrigued (and it's only been two days.) Overall I'd have to say it's been a mostly positive experience with some potential for being a viable business networking strategy, as long as I don't let myself get overly distracted with it.

After setting up my account, I searched for people in my target market (coaches) and found a nice little cache of them Twittering (Tweeting?). Then I discovered it's really interesting to browse through the people that OTHER people are following -- there are some folks that I know OF, but don't otherwise know personally (Guy Kawasaki, John Jantsch and Dooce, for instance).

It's not that I'm into celebrity stalking or anything -- I'm just curious about how successful, creative people think.

Have also found several cool articles and links through people I've "met" via Twitter. For example, this is from an article called "The Ultimate Men with Pens Guide to Twitter":

The unspoken rule of Twitter is that you should never really answer Twitter's question, "What are you doing?" Post your thoughts, your opinions, your latest discovery on the 'net, what your kids are doing, what irritates you, what brings you joy. Twitter is like sex. Have fun with it.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm enjoying the folks who are posting pithy insights, observations about human nature, humorous one-liners and updates on interesting-sounding projects. What makes this manageable is that you can only post 140 words characters at a time – which makes for quick reading. Lots quicker than keeping up with the various online discussion forums that I participate in, for example.

I'm finding that I have very little interest in following people who only post: 1) What they're actually doing right this minute; and/or 2) Links to their own products and web pages.

Not sure if it's due to Twitter, but I think there's been a spike in my mailing list subscriptions since I joined. We'll see if it leads to anything.

Oh and I'm loving Twhirl, a free program that makes it possible to Twitter from your desktop instead of a browser window. You can also Twitter via IM, (GoogleTalk) and from your phone, too.

If you're on Twitter, follow me and I'll follow you, too!

P.S. I put a Twitter widget in the far right sidebar, about half way down the page. So if you're curious, you can see what I'm Twittering about.