Posts Tagged Twitter
Twitter earns something bigger than money
Posted by Samuel in Innovation, Social on May 20, 2009
Many have understood how they can earn money by using Twitter, but no-one knows how Twitter earns money.
There are many speculations concerning Twitter’s future.
This is my wish.
According to many, I live in an imaginary world. I believe that everything is created, and by a creator. If you believe in a creator/God then we could imagine that the earth and all its resources are “gifts” to mankind.
We’ve managed to take these “gifts” and make money out of it. New stuff is innovated out of them. We created Twitter.
I would like to believe that Twitter is a gift to mankind, from mankind. A new “gift” to connect people together, innovate new solutions using this great platform and make money. Thank you Twitter (God #2?)!
As I said, wishful thinking! I’ll love Twitter even if they figure out a way to earn money. 
Flat line for the Twitter Brain
To me one of the major Twitter experiences is the feeling of being connected to millions of other brains on the planet. It’s like Isaac Asimov’s fictional fantasy of Gaia is starting to come true. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but whenever I encounter a new term one of my first thoughts is “wonder what’s tweeted on that subject right now?”. And now and then during the day I need to get my Twitter Trends fix. Sometimes it reveals totally new things to me. It’s how I first heard of Susan Boyle, for instance. I’ve now realized that I got to hear about Susan Boyle only hours after she had rocked Britain the first time. That’s amazing! Usually weeks and months pass before I catch up on such events. (I’m not a fan of the genre, but I don’t want to miss something like the Susan Boyle phenomenon.) It’s totally awesome to get this opportunity to plug in to the Brain. Thank you Twitter!
Of course, sometimes the Twitter Brain is a bit stupid. Often it’s very shallow. And, yes, not seldom it’s really introvert. (Discussions about Twitter itself seems to be what interests the Twitter community the most.) I’m OK with that. I’m not one to throw out the baby with the bath water. The signal vs noise ratio is still really high.
But what happens if the Twitter Brain dies? Do I risk going brain dead if I’m plugged in to a huge Brain when it dies? Yes, obviously I do.
Yesterday the Twitter folks changed a setting used by 2% of their user base. And somehow enough people shut of their brains and started to tweet stuff like “Twitter Failed! Retweet!”, “Twitter is bad. Please Retweet!” “Goodbye Twitter. RT this!” and so on and so forth. Fully and utterly useless crap. Then the brains of the receivers of those tweets went dead and they retweeted. And their followers retweeted. And their followers … You get the picture. It was like a disease. My time line was full of tweets like that. I think four out of ten slots on Twitter trends were related to this too. Check the hashtag #fixreplies out and you start to get the idea. I felt I had to throw something in to the balance and cheered the change. That never showed up on Twitter Trends though.
Please, please you tweeting people. (And all you non-tweeting people too). Keep your brains switched on! I’m plugged in to your brain and I don’t want to go brain dead. Maybe if keeping ones brain switched on at all times is hard, we can train ourselves to sense when it’s off? And then there’s No Tweeting!. Of course the “When retweeting, use common sense” rule apply too.
Yesterdays flat line of the Twitter Brain was scary. I hope it was an exception.
Addendum: I’m also amazed at the official Twitter response to the brainless outcries. They call it “lots of great info”. Totally funny.
When retweeting, apply common sense
I read this really interesting blog about how there’s a better way to rewteet (via @JoshHelfferich). While I agree to most of what the article says, I somehow feel one could have skipped the moral lesson. Twitter is all fine and healthy even with all those copy/paste RT:s out there. No worries!
It all boils down to common sense anyway, doesn’t it? If you are quoting someone’s use of her 140 chars, then a verbatim “RT @source” makes a lot of sense. The Twitter I visit daily is full of interesting people who say important stuff in cool ways. There’s no point in rephrasing their tweets. If your Twitter doesn’t look like mine in this respect I suggest you use that unfollow button and start following interesting people instead. That’s what’s so good about your own timeline, it’s yours!
Passing on links could be a bit different though. Not always, because sometimes interesting people send their messages through both the link and the words they embed them in. (Apply common sense, remember?). But if you really are “just” passing on a link you should, really should:
- Know what that link is about
- Know what you think about the content
And then it shouldn’t be hard to craft your own words to follow the link. After all, you still want to reference who “sent” the link to you and the link occupies some space so you don’t have much space to fill anyway.
Maybe it’s this easy: If you care about that link being followed you’ll maximise the chances by letting your audience know why you recommend that link.
Or even simpler: Show respect!