Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Short Takes or Twitter

You know my short takes by now : some short messages on publications, events, teleconferences . . . I've been wondering for some time if Twitter wouldn't be the right place for this kind of stuff. I see people (whose blogs I read) being very enthusiastic about it (e.g. Willie Favero, Martin Packer). I've read about it, I visited it quite some times, I signed up for my own account already a year ago now (My account : mwambeke) but don't expect to find much over there right now.

Twitter should be one of the Web 2.0 tools having a great professional value, but it just escapes me. Still, if you want some reasons, here are your '11 reasons to use Twitter for business'. I just read this article today about 'The four stages of the average Twitter user' and I must admit I'm definitely still in the first phase (Confusion and Indignation). I'll give you one example (and no personal offence to M. Packer himself) but I attended the System z Conference last week in Brussels. And so did Martin Packer. So I read on his blog he would be reporting on Twitter about the Conference. Well, I'm still looking for the business value of these 'tweets' (Is this the right term ?). I'm not really interested to read he's in Marne Walle's session or in Bob Rogers' session chatting with Jeff Berger. I'm glad to read he didn't have too much delays on his way home, but if I really think about it, I got more business value from attending his presentations and reading his blog posts. And I'm convinced that the really interesting scraps and bits on Twitter will get published elsewhere too.

For the moment, I'm waiting for the second stage of Enlightenment "where (people) find something really interesting or timely on Twitter that wasn’t available from news, RSS feeds, or word of mouth from their friends".

I'll keep you informed on my Twitter adventures - if they aren't going the same way as my SecondLife adventures. Although many people are also strongly convinced of the business value of SecondLife. But for the moment my next Short Takes will be on my blog.

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