Why People Don't Use Twitter

I'm PRO Twitter Usage, bring on the CONS

[incrediBILL]

I've recently heard some interesting reasons of why people DON'T use Twitter which I find kind of bizarre actually. What's more interesting is the people that seem to complain the most about it have sometimes admitted they NEVER used it! How can anyone have such a strong opinion on something they've never even tried?

What I find fascinating is some of these people use IM, SMS, email, Facebook, etc. but draw the line at Twitter. Seriously?

To me Twitter is kind of like a CB radio. You just put it out there and if anyone knows anything about it they'll reply in real-time. Sometimes what you get in response is literally amazing IMO.

Some examples of why I like Twitter is the first time I complained in Twitter about a Comcast internet problem a Comcast service rep tweeted back and helped resolve my issue in mere minutes. Ever since then I go to Twitter for Comcast support instead of their phone based support system from hell. Also had a problem with LATNIC whois queries once and they replied and pointed me towards their new API which solved the problem. Companies are listening and it can be quite amusing at times what happens when you mention certain things. Many people post links to lots of new information being posted daily and I keep up-to-date on stuff I'd never have time to find on my own.

One morning I was having a real-time kerfuffle in Twitter with the local newscaster over something stupid he said on TV and was busy back peddling and arguing with me on Twitter during commercial breaks. It was hysterical.

That's just the tip of the iceberg and the overall experience has been nothing short of amazing IMO.

Customers use it, clients use it, friends use it, so let's hear it, why DON'T you use Twitter?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Tonearm]

Granted it takes a little while to figure out how to get the maximum ROI from Twitter, but once you do it can be amazing.

This is OT and I apologize but you've piqued my curiosity. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Play_Bach]

I signed up with Twitter very early on (this was when they had only a few thousand members), but didn't get it at all. Little did I know what lay ahead once political events started being Tweeted and covered by the press. How quickly that membership exploded!

Several years would go by before I finally figured out how I could integrate it with my site. Today I have about twice the amount of Twitter followers than Facebook.

The real genius of Twitter is the 140 character limitation that encourages a fast pace both for content generation and consumption. It's an echo of the age of the telegraph where messages were brief and to the point. Brevity equals velocity (in other words, speed is king).

[webindia123]

It has advantages if you are an established brand and care for customer retention and new launches.

But then your team should be smart enough to tackle the 'can of worms'. People shout a lot if they find it non-conducive to their expectations.

- lalit kumar

[scotland]

I use twitter and am sometimes amazed at the great personal responses I get. A few weeks ago I made a general moan about my Internet speed being terrible and BT Broadband support picked this up and replied to me with support - I was not following them at the time! Eventually they sent a BT engineer out to test my site and then fixed the problem remotely. My speed went from under 1MB connection to the current speed of 3.8MB which is pretty amazing as I live miles out in the countryside in the far north of Scotland - all because of a tweet comment I made!

As for other reasons for using Twitter it does give me contact with other people when working remotely in the Scottish Highlands. I do not use Facebook or any other social media (well I use Google + occasionally but find it useless)

[moTi]

i tried out twitter about two years ago and abandoned it a few weeks later.

- twitter is used by comparably few people, at least outside the us: none of my peers use twitter. even if they would, i don't know what i should do there. it's not a tool for my conversations.

- the name sounds ridiculous and immature outside the english-speaking sphere. if you ask someone if he is twittering, you earn a sympathetic grin at most - it's embarrassing.

- i hate what i hear about the management. in view of how they treat the developers, they must be quite ugly guys. caring more about their logo. it's disgusting. i wish them the worst.

- i find it overhyped. it's nothing more than an instant messenger on a web basis - rather worse because of the limitations. most people who are so mad about it, are late adopters - kids don't use twitter, they know it's a redundant tool.

- twitter is a marketing platform. use it for your job to promote yourself, fine. but honest conversation is a different thing. twitter is overrun with web marketers and pr folks, all of them with commercial interests. really not the kind of people i like to listen to.

[chewy]

I can't imagine life without it - but I'm a lurker - don't expect any Tweeting from me.

I follow many interesting people, SEO luminaries, political figures, comedians, friends I've met through conferences or online, etc.

I find it one of the most fascinating and rich source of material and sometimes prefer it over any other media.

But do I TWEET? Nope. Well, only occasionally and I have no interest in working at it. My followers are all robots. I have no interest in developing real followers. When I have something to say, that all goes to email, FB (or maybe G+ once and a while).

My wife has the kind of job and brain that can do super-multi-processing and I can see how, if you've got the horse-power, that this is truly hot media in the right hands, plus she learned at the feet of a super-savvy media person, and there are rules and etiquette and good stuff happens to people there if they follow the rules.

For instance, my wife and I have numerous friends around the world that we'd never had - and she's presently contracted to write a book - the connection that made it happen was Twitter / FB and her blogging.

Great thread by the way. Thanks Bill for kicking it off.

Just don't expect any Tweets from me.

[ember]

I am a writer and bemoan the decline of the English language. Most people can't write a simple sentence, and I believe Twitter is contributing to that.

[IanTurner]

I don't do Twitter because the industries I work in are very mundane - people just don't talk about the stuff I sell - and if you do talk about them people think you are very dull!

[albo]

Twitter can be very useful. As mentioned before: How to eliminate the fluff? Don't follow it. (And don't contribute to it.) I use Twitter as a news source. I follow @webmasterworld to be alerted when a new story pops. Similarly, Techmeme, ReadWriteWeb, CNet, alistapart, smashingcss, SearchEngineLand, and various others. All interesting reading. The few personal contacts I have, are tech-savvy, and the banter is worthwhile.

[webindia123]

how to get the maximum ROI from Twitter

@ tonearm ..me too is curious on this aspect, didn't find sureshot short term ways yet.

[bhonda]

You know, I read this thread yesterday, but since I had no real opinion on Twitter, and don't use it myself, I didn't take it any further.

However, last night I was trying to get on a banking website, and I couldn't. Google/Bing wouldn't have brought anything up, so, in light of this thread, I decided to search Twitter to see if anything useful was there on the subject.

Top tweet was from a news site, linking to an article saying the banking site was being hit by a DDOS. Second tweet was from the bank apologising for it. Third tweet was from a fairly well-known 'organisation' claiming responsibility for it, and saying that it would go on all night.

So, I wasted no more time trying.

I must admit, before that, I didn't think Twitter had much value outside of the celebrity/vanity sector, but now I do.

I won't be tweeting any time soon myself though.

[oddsod]

There's an earthquake happening on the other side of the world?

Yawn!

I'll read about it in tomorrow's newspapers.

[hal12b]

You need to draw the line somewhere with all the social media tools. When was the last time anybody went for a walk their spouse or played catch with their kid? I personally think Facebook and a few other social media websites are destroying society, but that's another topic all together. Twitter can be helpful with Incredibill's example with comcast, but that's probably all I would use it for... to help me resolve my problems. I am not interested in Justin Bieber's new styling mouse, don't care about Kardashian's diet, or all the other gossip out there. There are only 24 hours in the day, so some stuff needs to get axed or cut back.

[g1smd]

I am not interested in ...

You can completely avoid all that. You only see what you follow.

[hal12b]

I used to use it a lot, but the amount of garbage out there was too much. How many hot 20 year old russians really were following me because they liked what I wrote?

[Leosghost]

^^^ do you write about how to get Green cards ? ;)

[hal12b]

haha I know right.

[J_RaD]

I don't need to hear useless blahblahb from whoever... its just a distraction, like facebook.

my IM is signed in all the time though :-) you need something.... talk to me

I don't care about... I ate pizza, it was good... going out now.

[hal12b]

J_Rad - My thoughts exactly. This is the same reason I left facebook. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry on there posting about every minute detail of their life. I pulled the plug in July and never went back.

[g1smd]

I don't need to hear useless blahblahb from whoever...

If you don't "follow" it, you won't see it.

[J_RaD]

This is the same reason I left facebook. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry on there posting about every minute detail of their life. I pulled the plug in July and never went back.

yea facebook just seems to be a "look at me look at me look at me" kind of place. I don't need that senseless stuff sinking into my skull.

[zdgn]

Along with Google, Facebook, direct, plus two more, Twitter is amongst my biggest sources of traffic (with such minuscule effort at that.)

So I, for one, am glad I'm not the one who does not use it. :)

Viva la Revolucion Media Sociale! :D

[netmeg]

Those who get it, get it.

Those who don't, never will.

I for one am okay with that.

[Brett_Tabke]

I get it and love it. The changes to the UI however, have left me longing for the good old twitter that was actually usable. Todays Twitter is a cluster of js code. Megs of code to bring you 140 chars max times 25 tweets? It is absurd and doesn't work very well.

Then they have run off all the great apps that helped build twitter into what it is today.

I had "made do" with Twitter until this week during Pubcon. Twitter filters, promoted tweets and other manipulations of the time line, meant that following what was going on was nearly impossible. Watching twitter during Pubcon used to be one of my favorite things. It now takes so many clicks to even come close to watching the channel - that it is infuriatingly slow and lethargic. Even then - twitter is so trying to promote quality tweets, that you end up missing stuff that was important because it was never shown to you...

[netmeg]

Yea, the client thing is a real issue. AFAIK the only "official" client (other than the web interface) is Tweetdeck, and I just can't use that - I can't easily read white text on a dark background. Had to go fishing around till I found one that was dark on light, and it's buggy. And it's not practical for me to use the web interface.

But the *idea* behind it works well for what I get out of it. They just need to do better on the execution.

[Leosghost]

@netmeg..apparently the new tweetdeck update allows you to change the background to white..:)
[technewspedia.com...]

[netmeg]

Right, but there are other style issues I can't deal with (too many underlines on links, etc) Seesmic was a much better client and much more readable, but they tanked.

[incrediBILL]

This is the same reason I left facebook. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry on there posting about every minute detail of their life. I pulled the plug in July and never went back.

That's actually a problem of how you use it because you selected to follow and read the Tom, Dick and Harry posting crap. If you follow people posting useful information then it's very informative.

Reminds me of people that complain about the sushi at a Chinese place or the fish at steak house. My mom recently ordered a hamburger that thousand island dressing on it, plainly stated on the menu, and then complained she didn't like thousand island. Much like properly choosing twitter followers, had she chosen the burgers WITHOUT the thousand island her experience would've been much better. Much like reading the menu, you can look at each Twitter members profile and current tweets before you follow them and choose not to and you'll never see them, ever.

The real trick to Twitter is to just turn it off whenever there's a ball game on television as normally useful and insightful people suddenly start posting scores, team chants, and other mind numbingly useless bits of trivial game related information. (you know who you are!)

[netmeg]

I sure do.

go blue!

[skibum]

I never found twitter useful for anything except customer service issues and breaking news on occasion. I think it probably dumbs people down and makes them more anti-social than text messaging. I used to post my own workouts on there more for my own records than anything else. When a new blog post goes up it still gets posted to twitter, I think. It has it's uses for sure and is valuable at time for some things but 99% of the time those uses don't match anything I have a need for.