Twitter divides people into two camps. To those who use it, it\’s a whole new Internet. There\’s the Web of pages and content, and there\’s the Twitter of people and connections. Both are valuable and both are enjoyable, but they do different things and they do them in different ways.
To people who aren\’t on Twitter though, the service looks completely bizarre. It\’s a place where people go to tell strangers what they had for breakfast and what they\’re about to have for lunch. They can\’t understand why anyone would want to read the sort of banal posts you can often find on Twitter time-lines.
They just don\’t get it.
To dismiss Twitter because so many people like to say what they\’re eating or watching on television or reading at the moment is completely wrong. It\’s like refusing to watch Indiana Jones movies because they\’re about a guy who doesn\’t like snakes.
It misses the point.
When the Indiana Jones writers created their character they put his fear of snakes into the script for a reason. It gave him an extra dimension. It made him more human. Indiana Jones isn\’t an action hero who fights Nazis and digs up hidden treasure. He also acts like a real person and has the kinds of fears and phobias with which we can all identify.
That\’s what those apparently \”banal\” tweets in your time-line do. And that\’s why I include random thoughts in my time-line.
Sure, I\’ll post tweets about marketing, about tweeting and about my company\’s news. But I\’ll also post plenty of tweets that reveal what I\’m thinking about and what I\’m doing right now. By themselves they aren\’t interesting at all. But for the people who follow me, they reveal my personality — and they help to build a human connection.
And that\’s what Twitter is all about.
It\’s not about content – although that\’s important. It\’s about relationships, and relationships are always built slowly, one brick at a time, by revealing small details about our personalities and our lives.
There\’s no such thing as a banal tweet on Twitter. All your tweets say something about you.