It is in no way a surprise that we have a new internet "Fad" at least that's what allot of people seem to think of twitter, it wasn't long ago that everyone suddenly dumped their myspace accounts and jumped onto facebook. Not everyone thinks its a fad of course, because it is on the verge of becoming huge! I have had an account for a short while now but not yet had the chance to really investigate the uses or purpose of twitter but in the last couple of months I have started to make a bigger presence with Twitter and try to get to grips with it.
As part of my exploration twitter I found my self at the Social Media Cafe (SMC) session held at the Northern on Tibb St in Manchester. About 40 or 50 people filled the room in different groups discussing separate subjects. Social marketing, word press and Mobile phones. I jumped straight into the social marketing discussion excited and willing to learn about other peoples "new media" experiences I was ready to learn.
Unfortunately the entire night was dominated by some people who had been using twitter for the last year or more, so they where well and truly veterans and using twitter to there advantage for some time, and they did seem incredibly confident in their knowledge but they where so bitter about any new users. Not that they were new users but how there experience was changing. They where incredibly annoyed that someone was using twitter in a different way to them? or to how they thought twitter should be used! The main complaint seemed to be that certain industries now target other industries and effectively spam with Press-tweet-leases (I just made that up "press releases through twitter".) so said annoyed pair are fed up with being spammed...block? or do you not want to because it is a negative effect , better to have more than less or not burn your bridges? what ever the situation the entire discussion was almost a waste of time said argument was even asked to be quite by another group! (I actually left the night with a head-ache. Thanks.)
In my opinion Twitter has one rule "what are you doing now" so in that school of thought are allot of people mis-using the site, but I also you should be allowed to use twitter in what ever way you can, be creative and inventive, help the use of twitter evolve. Nothing ever gets done with people saying "you cant do this, you cant do that" there should be no spamming, but there is so what are we going to do? people still drop litter and there are laws against that, chewing gum all over the floor in town centers pretty annoying to but what do we do? for the most part block it out!! So if we all blocked this the overall discussion was non exist-ant, I was desperate to pipe in and move the scenario that they where discussing on, but even I couldn't get a word in edgewise!
In the end there was a resolution and the chair cleverly rounded the evening off by delegating some tasks and home work for next month. Ultimately I think they are going to create a twitter guide, probably including rules and regulations that I might like to ignore or choose not to be annoyed by.But I do hope to learn from this knowledgeable frustrated pair. I do believe it is a really good event and that there will be plenty more opportunities to attend the night and learn from the people at the front of the technology.
See you next time?!
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