Twitter has almost 500 million registered profiles now and
users are churning out around 175 million tweets every day. That’s a lot of
activity. If you’re a stat junkie then check out this infographic at MediaBistro for all sorts of interesting information.
The 140 character limit on tweets makes Twitter a weird and
wonderful collection of voices. It also seems to be the platform of choice for
celebrities to interact with fans. Throw competitions, promotions and random
bits of information into the mix and even Twitter users following a modest
number of people are going to struggle to keep up with everything that’s going
on in their stream.
Like all social media I got a buzz when I first signed up to
Twitter and then I lapsed and didn’t use my account for months. Just recently I’ve
been getting back into it. It’s the variety that has me hooked at the moment. Yesterday
I investigated after a tweet from Simon Pegg asked people to lay off Nathan
Fillion about “holding twine”. Turns out some blogger asked him to send her a
photo of himself holding twine and he ignored her, she tried the same with Pegg
and managed to make it a trending topic which elicited a photo from him. Now
you could argue that the ten minutes I spent reading about that during a busy
workday was a complete waste of time and you’d be right, but sometimes Twitter
is genuinely informative, interesting or it just makes you smile.
My favorite story last week was on the Guardian as Twitter
co-founder, Biz Stone, said that using Twitter for hours at a time “sounds
unhealthy”. He could have a point. Do you find yourself sitting for hours on
end tapping those new tweets as they pop up? How much time do you spend reading
tweets? What is your primary purpose in using Twitter? Who is your favorite
person to follow?
I dip into Twitter a few times a day at the moment and read
a few tweets. I guess my primary purpose in using it is to find and share
interesting information. My tips to follow, apart from me of course, are
William Gibson @GreatDismal for a really bizarre mix of tweets and Dara O Briain
@daraobriain for some cutting humor.
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