Twitter - again

(By Richard Holway 11.00am 25th Mar 09) My foray into the wonderful world of Twitter has created a very interesting ‘postbag’. Clearly there are a few HotViews readers who think that any Twitter doubters are Luddites. There again, a majority of the responses I get seem to agree with me. My last report – McKinsey joins the Twitterers on 17th March 09 – ended with the words “Life is seriously too short to wade through this sea of flotsam and jetsam in the hope of finding a pearl of wisdom”. That seemed to strike a chord with many readers!

The FT today carries an interesting report - Small businesses find big value in Twitter website – purporting to show that UK smaller businesses have embraced Twitter (700,000 UK SMEs sending 3m messages a day) but larger companies have not. “Just 19 of the UK’s top 100 technology companies are using Twitter”.

The problem is that Twitter is fast turning into a corporate PR channel. You might think you are following an individual – but more and more of Twitter’s content is being put out by PR companies or marketing departments. Some Twitters suggest that we should post HotViews items on Twitter. But is that really what it’s for?

I’ve not looked at (or updated) Twitter for a week now. But I still get more and more followers! I expected interesting stuff from fellow analysts. But those self same analysts only seem to publish banal extracts from their lives (waiting at T5, lentils for dinner, fire alarm’s gone off etc)

I’m sure this post will elicit another set of “you are missing the point” comments. But, clearly, I am!

Footnote - A reader sent me a link to Steve Rubel's post - Twitter is Peaking. I suspect there might be a lot of truth in that!