This is a post about Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said I’d never do a Twitter post but people persist in asking me to explain what on earth I’m talking about.
And I’m gradually getting tired of giving my tough love “here’s the thing, you’re doing it wrong” talk to people who’ve tried it and think it’s boring or stupid. It’ll be a lot easier if I can just send them a link.
And anyway, I promised two readers of this blog who are Twitter newbies that I’d give them some tips.
The great debunking begins.
You know what? People talk a lot of trash about Twitter but really that’s just because they’re doing it wrong.
And can you blame them? Well, you could, but please don’t. It’s not their fault. I blame the Twitter myths.
Yes, it’s absurd that something so young has already acquired a stack of associated myths and legends, but there it is — so let’s take these babies apart. It’s debunking time, my friend.
Twitter Myth #1: It’s “microblogging” or something.
Uh, no. That’s not what Twitter is about. It’s not “microblogging”. No one says, “Oh, boy! You know what I feel like this morning? Microblogging!” Yuck.
(And, by the way, even if there technically was such a thing as microblogging? So what? Microblogging — for those of us who aren’t social media consultants — is an empty, boring, meaningless word. Meh.)
It doesn’t matter anyway whether it is or isn’t because everyone is wrong, and actually that whole tiresome “Gee, what is Twitter?” debate is completely over, because what Twitter is, as it turns out, is a bar.
It’s a bar.
It’s the local neighborhood bar/cafe thing where you hang out. A multi-dimensional neighborhood bar/cafe thing.*
*Only it’s online. And sometimes from your phone. I know. Get over it, it’s the future.
Why do you hang out in your neighborhood bar/cafe thing?
Because it’s your local. It’s your place. It’s where your friends are. It’s where you make new friends. It’s where you go because sometimes being smart and funny in your head just doesn’t cut it.
Is it always cool? No, sometimes it sucks. Maybe no one you like is there. Maybe it’s that new bartender who plays weird music. So you leave. But you come back later anyway because the good days are so, so good.
This bar/cafe/whatever has the awesomest people in the world and yes, some that are just not your people. Hey, it’s up to you to choose where to sit.
If you sit where people are talking loudly on their cellphones, blowing cigar smoke in your face or hitting on you, then yeah, it’s probably going to be yucky and horrible.
If you find a corner where a bunch of smart, interesting people are talking about smart, interesting things, it’s going to be engaging and soul-nourishing. And fun.
If you go and don’t talk to anyone, you might well wonder why you shouldn’t just have your beverage-of-choice at home. Yes, in that case it will be boring.
So. It can be the best bar ever or just that lame place on the corner. Your choice.
Twitter Myth #2: It’s about answering the question “What are you doing?”
No, no, no. This is a misunderstanding of almost tragic proportions, unwittingly perpetuated by the hapless Twitter regime.
If you try to follow the rules according to Twitter, you’ll get lost in a hurry. They ask you right up front to play the game by answering the question “What are you doing”. Do not answer this question! False start. Fail.
Twitter is not about “What are you doing?” in the exact same way that real-life conversations are not about “Hey, what are you up to?” even though they might start that way.
If you try to talk about what you’re doing (unless what you happen to be doing is boxing a poodle while stilt-walking with your poodle-booter troupe), you will almost certainly be boring.
And the first rule of Twitter is “Do not be boring!”
Worse, you may tend to be honest. You may say things like “Eating a banana” or “Taking my kid to soccer practice”.
I refer you to the first rule, mentioned above.
So what should you type into that little box?
Well, the question Twitter really means to ask is “What are you thinking? No, what are you really thinking?”
Or: “What do you think about the thing that you’re thinking?”
Or: “How about you let that voice in your head do the talking for a minute, eh?”
You know that inner voice? The one that narrates a steady commentary of funny, meaningful, goofy and profound things that you usually just say to yourself and no one ever gets to appreciate?
Twitter is that voice’s new home. It is where that voice goes to hang out. Because that voice needs a voice. I mean, it needs a bar.
Twitter myth #3: It’s a time suck.
Uh, no. Twitter does not have to be another procrastination thing. Again, I think you might doing it wrong.
It really only takes a couple of seconds to post something. There’s a 140-character limit, for heavens sake.
Then you take three to five minutes to catch up on what everyone else is up to, and you’re done.
It’s pretty much always going to be a shorter break than the “Oh, I’ll just check my email” rabbit hole.
And here I’ll briefly put on my giant “Hi, I just wrote a book on Dissolving Procrastination” hat so that you trust my expertise on this ….. Twitter is so not the enemy. It’s not. It’s one of the few “right-sized bite-sized” breaks you’ll find on the internets.
Twitter is recess. And recess is good for the soul. Yes, it can be a time suck. So can anything. Including poodle-boxing. But if you use it mindfully as a quick in-and-out, Twitter is actually a productivity tool.
A fun productivity tool that also doubles as the weirdest but most successful marketing technique ever and is also a bar. Beat that.
Twitter myth #4: There are no problems in Twitterville.
Okay, this is a myth that I just made up. A mythical myth, if you will. Twitter is far, far from a problem-free zone, but here are the three main issues and their solutions:
(1) As with any bar, there are people who come to get in fights. Some of these are people who just genuinely enjoy a good brawl and some of these are people who are mean, hurting, hate-filled trolls.
Don’t hang out by that one pool table if you don’t like fights.
(2) And as with any bar, there will be some creepy guys who want to buy you drinks. You use body language to tell them to back off (that’s the block button) and if they overstep, report them to @oddfollow and to the shift manager the Twitter people.
(3) And of course there’s the fail whale.
Sometimes Twitter is broken, and usually just when you really need that metaphorical whiskey or cup of coffee or whatever and your hands are shaking. It’s time to face up to the fact that you are addicted to Twitter. No worries. You’re in good company.
Take whatever smartnesses you were going to spread to the world and turn them into a blog post. It will be back later. Join the Fail Whale Fan Club. (I’m not even kidding, there’s a fan club.)
Or you can just go to IsTwitterDown.com and press the refresh key over and over again like a rat hoping for a yummy, yummy food pellet. We’ve all been there. It’s okay. You’ll be fine.
See you at happy hour, right?
If you want to follow me I’m the one in the pink angora beret I go by @havi. Just so you know, I sometimes say horribly inappropriate things that I would never say here. That’s because it’s a bar.
It’s also my very favorite place on the internets. It’s where that voice in my head likes to hang out. And I pretty much go wherever she goes.
If you want me to follow you back, talk about poodles. Or start up a conversation. I don’t bite.
Special thanks to Laura Fitton aka @pistachio who accidentally inspired this post by being awesome.
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So, blogs are cafes, and Twitter is a bar – I like it. If you want the slower pace and in-depth conversation and the ability to really pay attention to what someone is saying one-on-one, you go to the cafe, and if you want to simply be part of a social milieu and see *what’s going on*, you choose the bar.
Hey Havi,
Thanks for the post, and I think your bar analogy is a really good. I am a brand consultant by trade, and one thing that came up immediately for me in reading your post is the shortcomings of the company itself in explaining Twitter as both a brand and experience to especially new users.
I’d love to hear your and others’ take on whether Twitter’s culture has evolved to where it is today not because of Twitter the company’s strategy, but rather because of how users actually use it? Can answer me here and through Twitter: @sparklesthesky
Oh and by the way, I think I need some of your brain yoga expertise – caffeine and sugar free just seems too good to be true!
Take care,
Alycia
alycia de mesas last blog post..Pint Sized Olympic Brand Marketing
@Erica – Totally. Twitter can also do the quiet, cozy British-style let’s have lunch in the pub thing as well as the checking out the nightlife thing.
And sometimes you need say, “Whoah, it’s loud in here, let’s take this to DM/IM/email/phone/telepathy/whatever”.
But yeah, I’ve met some of my favorite people in the world on Twitter. And some of my other favorite people in bars and cafes. It’s all about connection. Which obviously is sometimes about going inward and sometimes about opening up.
See also:
Summize.com (Twitter search), TwitPic (picture upload for Twitter), http://is.gd URL shortener (it has a Firefox plugin as well) and The Twitter 10 Commandments.
Best way to get followers is to be interesting and to @reply to people you follow (again, be interesting). It helps to have a blog that you mention in your user profile sidebar. People on Twitter without a blog are kinda suspect.
As with blogging, getting over that first hump of having enough people follow you for it to be worthwhile is hard, but keep plugging. I promise it’s worth it.
Finally, if you have an iPhone install Twitteriffic.app: it’s super fun to post pics and livetweet your action packed life (it’s more appropriate to tweet about what you’re doing when you’re not in a cube at home in front of a computer).
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Yay, indeed, thanks!
My Twitter World and my Other World couldn’t be more far apart.
And like you, explaining my outrageous enthusiasm for Twitter, given I’ve never done a stitch of social media ever before, comes off as “what on earth has she been drinking?”
I literally drool when I start talking about someone super cool I’ve met on Twitter, or found a speaker for my smARTist Telesummit on Twitter, or set up yet another artist collaboration on Twitter…or found a fabulous resoure I would have never found on my own, or … or…or…
But if that person doesn’t tweet, their eyes glaze over. The best time I’ve had recently was at a bar, dancing my heart out and talking up Twitter to the ‘younger’ set. Now that was fun!
oops..hit that send button too fast…
All that rambling just to say: this is the perfect post to send to people. Bars they’ll get!
Hmmm… Twitter as local bar. Not being a person who ever has (or would) hang out at a local bar, I’m having some trouble with this concept. 🙂 I guess I’ll have to try to think of what it might be to me. Coffeehouse? Park? Potluck dinner party?
Mensa party?
The one thing not covered in your essay is those people who sit off in the corner of that bar, with a few friends around, not joining in, talking very quietly behind their hands. I can’t follow @OddFollow. I can’t read @sparklesthesky.
If it’s a bar… why are you taking your drinks and chips out to the back alley and not letting the rest of us come along?
I’ve been using Twitter for a year now and I think I understand it. But I don’t understand the “I’m private” people who publish their @ addresses but nothing else.
Vicki Browns last blog post..vlb: Changed automatic payment details for credit cards due to checking acct # changes. Ten steps for each card/account = nine too many! Grumble.
So, you’re saying I’m a rat on stilts boxing a poodle? Cool.
To the comment readers: Follow @havi on Twitter. I have for a few weeks now and she’s one of my favourite people I follow. Definitely cool to have around the bar.
Hey, something I’ve found really fun is http://www.posterous.com. It’s great when I want to say something longer in a quick, easy way. It’s a blog platform (I can hear it now, “oh no, not another blog platform” – wait, really) where you post just by shooting off a quick email and throwing whatever links or photos you want in the email. Posterous takes the email and turns it into a post and will turn links into active content (videos, etc.). What’s also cool is that you can set it up to auto-post the title of your entry with a link to Twitter (I did). It’s just a great, fast way to throw out a longer thought when you have one. I use it for all my non-professional passing grumblings. I’ll link to it here but I warn you… I have a cynical streak. 😀
Also, if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @brandonw. Anyone who hangs out with Havi has to be awesome enough to hang out with in the Twitter Bar & Grill.
@Brandon – The Twitter Bar & Grill. Love it. Love. That is so great. And thanks for the warm words. I like following you on Twitter too.
@Vicki – Yeah, I guess I was picturing more of the european style bar that doubles as a cafe that doubles as a neighborhood hangout that everyone goes to, and less a dark, smoky kind of thing. Work the metaphor any way you like.
And good point … I’m not sure why some people come only to hang out with their closed groups, but I imagine it comes from feeling afraid about how others will relate to them.
@Ariane – awesome, awesome, awesome.
@Nathan – I always count on you to show up with the list of useful resources because that’s your thing. You own the whole “here’s a bunch of useful resources” thing. So so great.
@Alycia – good question. I think it’s an important one. Not sure I can tackle it in 140 (!) but have you posted on it? That would make for a super interesting discussion … I will think it over and get back to you.
And everyone else … so far three people have joined twitter and are blaming me (and this piece) for it. We’re having fun, so come on and have lunch with us in the Twitter Bar & Grill if you feel like it. It’s not a cult, really, I swear …
@Vicki – Several of my Twitter friends – including my sister, who first got me into Twitter ages back – have locked tweet streams. Some of the reasons I’ve heard for locking include:
* Privacy from an ex (esp. if that ex is also on Twitter)
* Ability to tweet without risking employment at a touchy workplace
* Ability to tweet highly personal content to a small subset of folks (often on a second account).
One friend has a second account he uses just when traveling to sensitive areas for journalistic reasons, to which he constantly reports his physical location. It’s an account only a select few trusted friends and family can access, and not something he’d want to post publicly or spam his main followers set with, but it’s an important safety measure for him and helps reassure his family.
I guess for those folks, Twitter *is* more like a private dinner party than the neighborhood bar.
Great post! (am I am NOT a spam bot, I mean it :))
I love the bar analogy, Havi. I love how you relish in being yourself and exposing your quirks.
So of course I follow you on Twitter… even though I haven’t yet gotten around to start going into that bar all that much 🙂
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I recently joined twitter and am loving it. I found your article very helpful. So much so that when I blogged about joining twitter (my website is about overcoming math, science, and technology phobias, and for some people twitter is definitely a technology phobia!), I linked to your article.
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Whew, Havi. This was helpful. In my first 24 hours of Tweeting, I can honestly say I’ve been boring and not really sure how to hang out. I have not spent time in bars for year and I don’t drink alcohol, ugh. OK, but I do live with the voice that mostly doesn’t have a voice. I suppose it will take some time to get in the groove, but at least now I know not to answer the questions, What are you doing? Yikes. I can be so naive and overly truthful, like I just ate dinner and watched some Rachel Maddow (I love her). Anyway, thanks for this post and know that if my tweets are boring, I’m making constant efforts to stop that newbie tendency. 🙂
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@Kate aka @KateHeartofBiz on Twitter – welcome to the Twitter Bar & Grill.
You can think of it as a cafe rather than a bar. Or even a spiritual retreat center if you like. The point is that hey, you’re not going to get on with everyone but that it really is possible to find your gang and feel at home.
I don’t think you’re boring!
It’s just that some people forget that Twitter is a safe place to Be Themselves. So they try to be fancy experts and give value and blah blah blah.
It’s a really great place to play, is the point I wanted to make I guess. Anyway, yay. Welcome.
This is possibly the BEST explanation of Twitter I’ve seen. I didn’t need it explained to me, but a lot of my clients and friends did. Love your analogy!
This is really good. I wish I’d seen it when I joined. Now I’ve got it in my pocket for the next generation of Twitterites. I’ve tried to explain the What are you doing before, but you did it so much better.
And thanks to @kariedwards for bringing this to my attention.
this is the best article i’ve read on ‘how to get twitter’ and one i’m forwarding to the crowd that’s asked me to explain. really…the metaphor works (bar or coffeshop) and more importantly i think people need to think more about adding value to the stream when they hang out on twitter. no one goes to the bar to recite their day front to back, and no one should be doing this on twitter (or on their blog, for that matter). they should be picking away at their interesting thoughts and letting the crowd into their weirdness.
be interesting. it sounds like a tall order, but in reality we’re all very interesting.
Fabulous! Well said! I quite enjoyed reading your explanation & demystification. But evidently, I’ve been doing it all wrong because I’ve been answering that question, “What are you doing?” Good to know. Now, I’ll just let that voice in my head speak out.
Ciao
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Good stuff. I always likened Twitter to a huge room where everyone talks and always in groups and sometimes what those groups have to say are important and sometimes not and then there are the types who just walk around the room from group to group, say hi, and keep walking. And then you called it a bar. Much better.
As someone who has never really hung out in bars (I know. I’m a sad, sad loser who was always broke in college… and uh, still is always broke.) I try to explain to people that Twitter is like the ultimate water cooler in a large office, or the lobby/elevator of one of those humongous skyscrapers where a million people work for a thousand different companies. You never really know who you’re going to run into at a given time, and there’s always a large range of people walking through. And just like working in a huge building if you really need to speak to a specific person you know where to find them (That’s the Direct Message function.)
It’s the analogy I use when people criticize me for following too many people and quote the dreaded “You can’t have a meaningful conversation with that many people at once.” myth. I didn’t have meaningful conversations with everyone I knew in that building, but I knew all of them and I liked chatting with most in passing, on the elevator.
Great great post. I’m off to retweet it all over Twitter.
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I love the bar metaphor. I have used similar metaphors for my own site at times.
Twitter is indeed one of my favorite local pubs and yes, sometimes the wrong crowd is there and all my friends are home watching the game.
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I will now send this post to everyone in the free world. It may take a minute so don’t be mad if I’m not back at your cafe til, say, tomorrow.
Hello, Havi,
Thank you for writing this, it was very useful to me! I am on twitter and a newbie. I am also a bit of a real life hermit. As I described myself in my mini bio, I live completely alone with A dog and A cat.
So, as you may or may not be able to imagine, the idea of being ‘social’ is a bit of a sticky wicket for me! Having said that, I am a hermit with a computer, and this does make me *stand out* amongst my fellow …hermitage?
I also have real life friends but they have all moved away. Am unemployed. Phone NEVER rings. All those those characteristics of hermit-isolation-deprivation have been in place for a couple years now. No joke, it would have driven the average person off their nut and then some, but I am not average, nor am I really very exceptional…
I do like a proper neighborhood bar, just don’t have anyone to accompany me to the one in Moss Landing.
I think a symptom of my isolation is that I may not be the best *responder* on my little network of tweeters. Oh crap, and there’s that other lamentable character defect of mine…laziness. We all gotta be something. And here’s my tip to the yunguns out there, it is helpful to develop a thick(er) skin.
Am I meandering? Forgive me! If it OK with you, I would quite enjoy following you on the twitternets!
Sincerely,
Eve Norton …one more ‘r’ and I’d have me a double palindrome 😉
This was so great. But my only problem with this whole senario is a tiny bit of reality: Twitter doesn’t serve alcohol. And sometime these tweets really need drink!
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yes!
OK That helps me heaps, it’s time !!! to finally join you all on Twitter, Thanks Havi yet again
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Great analogy I loved it! So if Twitter is a bar/pub, then my goal is to be as popular and well loved as Norm in Cheers.
Thanks Havi! I keep getting asked a lot of these questions too. Now I know where I can send them!
I actually spend quite a lot of time on Twitter, possibly a few hours a night that I’d be surfing the internet anyway. I’ve met people that I’d never have met any other way, had insanely interesting conversations, networked, discussed businesses, cats, women’s stuff, businesses, people, life.
I love it. It’s like walking through a doorway and discovering a whole bright shiny fresh new world on the doorstep, just waiting for me to step into the sunshine and enjoy.
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Awesome. I don’t love social networking type sites, but this makes sense. Thankyou.
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We on the trailing edge salute you. I had heard of twitter and thought, ‘the sound of twits’ which, if you aren’t familiar with english of the mid 20th century, was an affectionate term for ‘fools’.
So I’m going to have a stiff (non-virtual) whisky and give it a try. Cheers.
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The service is totally automatic so you know when you see one of those links, it is safe.
Love it!
Wow, I am just getting into twitter and got to your blog from there actually. Nice blog post. It helped me understand things a little better hehe.
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I’m still not twittering, it takes me so long to get new concepts. I need more lead time.
What’s coming next over the horizon?