PC Pro’s great Twitter adventure is barely a fortnight old (sign up for our Twitter feed here) but already we’ve found a great number of things that both amaze and annoy us about the micro-blogging site.
Here, in no particular order, are things we like, and can’t stand, about Twitter. Ideas suggested by others on the PC Pro Twitter feed and elsewhere are duly credited in brackets.
GOOD THINGS
1. Simplicity. You sign up, start Tweeting, and the ball’s rolling within minutes.
2. It’s a brilliant way of breaking news. “It’s almost like the old Telex machines” says senior news reporter, Stu, who’s barely old enough to remember them.
3. It’s good for getting other people to write your presentation for you (DarienGS)
4. Celebrities talk like “real” people without agents/producers/editors getting in the way. And the best Tweeting stars actually interact with their audience. Dave Gorman being a prime example.
5. Immediacy.
6. 140-character limit makes you think more about what you’re saying (montemplar)
7. Anyone can do it.
8. Twitter allows people to fire-off inane day-to-day stuff that (hopefully) keeps other channels of communication (email, SMS, blogs) tidier.
9. Variety of ways to access: PC, mobile, multiple apps and widgets. (montemplar)
10. You can stamp personality and bespoke design on profile pages, yet they retain a simple, consistent structure.
11. Trend spotting. Services such as TwitScoop make it easy to spot what’s going on right now.
12. It’s free.
13. In a world of Flash, Java, Ajax and other attention-hogging wibbles, it’s refreshingly clean.
14. The API – inspired decision to distribute freely has created a million and one different apps, widgets and plug-ins. TweetDeck being our current favourite.
15. No need for niceities. You cut straight to the point.
16. We’re irrationally pleased when someone we like/respect starts following us.
17. We know what our readers think of us, thanks to TweetDeck search.
18. You’re not constantly bombarded with ads, as with other free services.
19. That said, it’s an amazingly powerful, well-targeted sales channel.
20. The man who founded it is called Biz Stone.
BAD THINGS
1. It panders to our short attention spans.
2. Anyone can do it.
3. 140 chr limit makes us all spk like teenagers. FFS.
4. It quickly becomes an unmanagable flood.
5. It’s another bloody thing to keep up-to-date.
6. Presentation. The site looks like your dad built it, in between putting up shelves and the rugby.
7. The number of companies that suddenly start following you after you mention their products. (parsingphase)
7. Reliability. It’s up and down like Amy Winehouse.
8. Media bandwagon. Sky bloody News has now got a Twitter Correspondent. Hell’s teeth.
9. Fake celeb profiles. Yawn.
10. It’s not (yet) sustainable. Trillions of users, no clear way to make money from them.
11. It’s hard to maintain a professional image.
12. It’s horribly addictive.
13. Conversations are desperately difficult to follow.
14. Spambots.
15. We can’t ignore it. Like a sullen puppy, it craves attention.
16. We know what our readers really think of us thanks to TweetDeck search.
17. Someone beat us to pcpro. Grrr.
18. We’re still not sure what the point of it really is.
19. Jargon. RT. Hashtags. Just what the world needed. More things that need explaining.
20. “New Media” consultants are being paid thousands of pounds per hour to bandy about terms like Twitterverse to gormless corporate morons who are desperate to go Web 2.0. Someone pass the shovel.