The 10 Stages of a Tweeter
3 Sep
My Tweets Over Time (via TweetStats)
Now that I have been using Twitter for some time – from jumping on the bandwagon, to experiencing the learning curve, to really beginning to understand the value – I thought I would share my experience in hopes that I can educate some of those who are still misinformed about usefulness of Twitter and as such have not yet given it a shot. Though Twitter may not be for everyone, not giving it a shot due to being misinformed is just a shame.
So heres a summary of my experience with Twitter, in all honesty, in hopes that it will enlighten those who are still struggling to understand the platform and its usefulness.
- Stage 1: Twitter, Shmitter!
Why would I want to listen to people Tweet that they are “on the porch”?? Come on.. - Stage 2: Curiousity..
Ok, what is all the fuss about?! I better give it a shot so I can make up my own opinion about it instead of constantly reading about what others think of it. - Stage 3: Loner :(
Ok.. so now that I’m here, what do I do? Theres nothing here.. - Stage 4: Ok, My Interest is Peaked..
Ohh, you have to start following people for anything to happen.. Hey, this is kinda cool! Let me find all my friends and see if I can find some more interesting people to follow. - Stage 5: Overwhelmed :/
Wow, I followed back everyone who started following me and found lots of interesting people to follow from my friends’ lists, and now I am just lost in the constant feed of updates! Very overhwelming.. - Stage 6: Tweetdeck!
Well, I suppose I am now officially a power user. And thanks to Tweetdeck, I’m in love all over again! My Twitter world has become a peaceful place where I can swim in useful and interesting content. - Stage 7: Completely Immersed
Wow, it sure is easy to spend a lot of time on here without even feeling like I’m wasting my time since I’m learning so much from others in my industry. But now what are these hashtag things? And RTs? And how do I shorten a link so it isn’t long? And am I allowed to edit a post before RTing? Man, there really seems to be a community here that expects certain guidelines to be followed.. I need to research to figure out the seemingly established Twitter etiquette and so I understand everything that is flying around me. - Stage 8: Twitter Elitist
The Twitter experience is changing so rapidly now with the massive growth it is experiencing, which seems to be making a lot of the manual etiquette easier to abide by. Now I feel like an old-timer in an elite league, being that I have been here since before some of the major changes took place.. - Stage 9: Honeymoon is Kinda Over
Ok, I really need to stop following everyone who follows me and anyone who has ever said anything interesting, because even my Tweetdeck is getting really cluttered! Ugh! - Stage 10: Today’s Reality
So now that I have a lot of great people in my network, and have bookmarked hundreds of wonderful resources thanks to my Twitter discoveries, I no longer feel the need to be constantly searching on Twitter for places to go to find great info.
So What is Twitter to Me Now?
I get it now. Twitter is a great tool that has the power to bring together anyone with like interests seeking to discover or distribute useful content or insights, and igniting conversation amongst otherwise unlikely parties.
I may not be as active of a Tweeter as I once was a year or two ago, but Twitter has enabled me to discover countless people worth knowing in my areas of interest, many great blogs, wonderful tools, articles and resources – all of which I have now bookmarked. And I am among the first to find out about breaking advertising, tech and web trends when I am tuned in (simply because those are my areas of interest, not because that is all you will find on Twitter).
I think part of why I am much less active on Twitter now is because I amassed such a large quantity of information and resources in my “Immersed” stage, that I now have pre-established go-to resources for many things that I previously was turning to Twitter for.
But when I am just looking for generally interesting information or news or trends and want to browse freely without going to one specific blog with one specific area of focus, or when am searching for something specific that I don’t currently have a resource for, Twitter is still my go to place.
And when I want to share something that I feel may be interesting, valuable and/or useful to my followers, I tweet it. But only then. I don’t want to pollute their stream and expect the same from them.
I hope this has enlightened some who are still struggling with understanding what the Twitter buzz is all about, and potentially encouraged you to go and give it a shot now that you have a sense of how to start and what the experience will be like.
And for those who already knew, I’d love for you to share any “stages” in the Twitter experience that you think I may have overlooked. This is my personal experience, but it has occurred over the past few years, so its possible I forgot about a key milestone in my progression of Twitter use that may beneficial to share with others.
