What’s the point of Twitter?

Social media expert Beth Kantor makes some interesting points about the value of Twitter in a recent blog post.

Here’s a quote from her post:

Stepping back and seeing patterns is an important skill when you use Twitter, particularly as a listening tool.  That’s why I like to grab a search feed from Twitter for topics that I’m monitoring and then step back and see the patterns.

For non-Tweeters, the knock against Twitter has always been that it’s just another platform to talk about yourself. Another ‘mememe’ tool. But serious Tweeters tend to use Twitter to share first and promote themselves second, which is the true spirit of social media.

As Beth points out, blogger Bryan Person has developed an interesting way to monitor his Tweeting habits and ensure they aren’t too mememe.

Speaking of Twitter, Wired writer Clive Thompson wrote a great piece on Twitter as a ’social sixth sense’ last year.

Here’s a quote from the piece:

Individually, most Twitter messages are stupefyingly trivial. But the true value of Twitter — and the similarly mundane Dodgeball, a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse. And this, as it turns out, suggests where the Web is heading.

I have found that the Status line in Facebook – which works very much like Twitter – to be another way to create a ’social sixth sense’.