The Value of Social Media, Particularly Twitter
I remember when I first signed up for Twitter. I was thinking what a lot of other people were thinking and still do: “What am I supposed to use this for?” I remember using it briefly and then it went by the wayside. Something made me go back. My guess is it was the election cycle. Whatever it was, when I did jump back in, I jumped in with both feet and it’s been great.
Twitter started out with the idea that you could update people as to where you were and what you were doing and the information could be processed much faster with a 140 character “tweet” as opposed to logging into a blog. But Twitter has grown beyond that. I use it for a wide variety of information. From everything to politics, photography, blogging, sports, Christianity, entertainment, etc. You name it, chances are you’ll find like-minded people on Twitter discussing it. But it goes beyond just information. It’s a place for people to network and to share interesting ideas. Here are a few examples that I’ve experienced:
1. I connected with a Pastor of a church in Delaware (@meredithgriffin). We discovered we both had young sons that were dealing with bullies and we both agreed on the way our boys should handle the situation.
2. I connected with a guy who has the same last name as me (@joecaruso). And then found we share the same political views, the same faith and we’re both drummers.
3. My love of photography led me to follow @ihouseman who along with her husband do stunning wedding photography and though I don’t shoot weddings, their work has inspired some creativity in me.
4. I started following another Pastor from a church in Arkansas (@brandonacox) who has been a treasure trove of information with his tweets and I’ve also used him as a source to push my own church leadership to really embrace social media as an evangelical tool.
Aside from connecting with people, I use it for productivity. I use Google for my email, calendaring, to-do lists, and contacts. Twittercal is an excellent tool if you use Google Calendar. When something comes up, I simply send a direct message to @gcal and it posts it to my calendar within minutes.
There are those who are dismissing Twitter as a fad. It’s funny, but I remember many of the same people in 2001 and 2002 dismissing blogs as a fad and something no “real” writer or journalist would stoop to. Of course now it’s difficult to find anybody from the mainstream media that doesn’t have a blog or a mainstream media site that doesn’t feature a blog. It may take a little longer, but pretty soon you’ll see them with Twitter accounts.
