Twitter = The Demise of Social Media?

Hey! Fabulous to see you back =) if you haven't already, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don't miss a beat & sign up on the right to the Exclusive Members List & get your free Visibility Strategy & Enchanting Forest for Marketers report so you can find your money sites among other goodies!

Andrew Wee recently wrote a post entitled Will Twitter Kill Social Media? He infers that because Twitterers are Tweeting 24/7 with endless amounts of information, you would practically have to be glued to it to keep up. He says,

So it’s like watching TV, except that instead of being constrained by the content being broadcast by the television network, you’re at times held hostage to the content being broadcast by other users.

Well, honestly I’ve been “held hostage” by blogs before! I go there to check out ONE thing and end up there forever because there is a lot of other info I’m interested in, or one link leads to another, to another, and before I know it the amount of time I intended to spend reading up on something has quadrupled.

While there’s no doubt Twitter is consistently jam-packed with updates, I don’t think it will kill Social Media and this is what Twitter tools, and discipline, are for.

First, you can’t possibly read every single Tweet in the Twitterverse just as well as you can’t possibly read every single blog post or website out there. So, like with the rest of the Internet, you utilize tools, tactics and time allocation.

Of course, the average user is going to log in and scan over what’s new (although depending on how many people they’re following or where they’re looking they may not hit the bottom…but again, are you able to read every blog post made either?) but if we’re searching for something specific we’ll do a search to find what we want, either via our Twitter client or via another site that searches Twitter like Twitter Search.

And we have our fabulous Twitter clients to give us a hand in tracking and separating information as well. I currently use Twhirl but am going to being giving Seesmic Desktop a whirl in the next few days. Another popular one to help you divide up your contacts or searches is TweetDeck.

You can also check a specific person’s updates if you’re really into their Tweets and want to see what you missed while you were away.

Yes, it can create a bit of an addiction but many of us are addicted to the Internet, and other forms of communication, anyway so I really don’t see the difference much less the demise of Social Media thanks to Twitter. Heck, I can’t even get to the bottom of Facebook updates half the time anymore! The most popular social sites have “update” features and if you have a lot of friends, there are going to be a ton of updates…but I find the Twitter updates more useful than most.

But hey, maybe I’m biased because I *heart* Twitter. I think it’s fabulous for so many reasons. Yes, I’m inundated with updates and I miss many, but I also catch plenty and, again, turn to tools when in need.

Twitter lets me “chat” if I want, lets me search for certain things, throws great info out at me that I may not have even thought to look for or seen otherwise, has allowed me to build some great connections…and I like how it looks on the side of blogs LOL (yes, silly quirk I know).

I’m not arguing that it’s not addictive but, again, I don’t think it will kill Social Media; and, you have to learn to manage it just like everything else in your life and online.

Share and Enjoy: