I’ve been using Twitter for a few months now, and today jotted down a list of things I’m learning or never would’ve guessed before signing up and using. Here goes, in no particular order.
1. At some point, probably sooner than later, people you do not know will start “following” you. I just had this happen within the last 2 weeks. It started with people I’d followed, but now seems to be 2nd and 3rd degrees away.
2. It’s easy to go follow-crazy. I’ve found the best way to find others of interest to follow is by seeing who your follows are following. I’ve found a lot of UMBC friends this way. Also, wefollow.com has a great directory of Twitter users – including a directory of UMBC people.
3. What Twitter.com says Twitter is for doesn’t accurately portray how it’s really used. I didn’t understand this until signing up, and can definitely understand why people are sometimes hesitant to sign up after just watching Twitter’s promo video or other press.
4. Twitter doesn’t auto refresh. This can be annoying, but is actually usually a good thing in terms of focus and productivity.
5. It’s easy to want to tweet everything. Or at least see that everything you do could be a tweet. I think it’s good to draft up some rules of use for yourself before using heavily. And remember that Twitter can have the same kind of consequences as any other social media site.
6. Real celebrities use Twitter. See @The_Real_Shaq, @jimmyfallon, @taylorswift13…
7. Twitter has a much better privacy set up than Facebook. Assuming your updates are locked as private. Only the people you want to see them do. I’ve since gone public, but knowing that was refreshing after feeling like there were so many avenues for people to see stuff on FB.
8. Twitter is a great place to centralize. Customized backgrounds allow people to use it as a hub, advertising what they do and who they are. See 25 of the best Twitter Designed Homepages, especially @jonathan360.
9. Facebook is getting scared. See their redesign to be more like Twitter.
10. It says something when someone has more followers than follows.
That’s it for now. Oh, and if you’re using Twitter and want to follow me I’m @apgordon.
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yeah everything is true on here, the most annoying of which is the redesign of facebook, I felt the last design was the best it could get.
Now facebook is like twitter without allowing you to choose who you follow until you say you don’t want to follow them…bad idea