Twitter: Your Expectations vs. Reality (Comment to win!)

by Aaron on June 2, 2010

When you first heard about Twitter, you probably wondered why the heck anyone would care about the answer to “What are you doing right now?” If you’ve used Twitter and developed some relationships, you probably realized that the connections go way beyond folks sharing what they’re having for lunch.

what confusion?!I want to hear your Twitter story in a couple sentences, of what you thought it would be like when you joined and then what you’ve found Twitter to actually be once you’ve used it for a while. I’ll select a couple commenters at random; one will win a Luma Loop camera strap (size medium – $60 value) and the other will get one year of Flickr Pro ($25 value). Winners will be announced next Monday (June 7th), so leave a comment soon!

Please share… what’s been your Twitter experience when compared with your expectations?

Photo by kl-Ga, used under Creative Commons licensing

These other posts might be of interest to you:

  1. Flickr + Twitter is Live, What about Licensing/Legalities?
  2. Flickr + Twitter: the End of Twitpic?
  3. Social Photo Podcast #1: Twitter Lists, Flickr+Getty, Twitter Revolution

Tagged as: contests, flickr, flickr pro, luma loop, Twitter

  • http://www.robinbalmer.com Robin Balmer

    I work with @justinkistner at Webtrends, where we tend to stay on top of the social universe as much as we can. I started being active on Twitter once I started following my coworkers, meeting other interesting Portland people based on my coworkers, and then starting to follow some of my favorite artists and comedians.

    The key to twitter is its simplicity and honesty – I know that it's actually Stephen Fry, one of my favorite actors, running his twitter. He talks about what he wants to (and runs a constant stream of jokes as his fake wife, MrsStephenFry) – and he even once DM'd me when I accidentally set him up for a dirty pun. It feels so much more real than Facebook or other places where social stuff is either vapid personal stuff or company's press releases in the first person.

  • http://twitter.com/CarrieLeighC Carrie C.

    I found twitter via @dhewlett, one of the actors on a favorite scifi show of mine. After my first tweet went out to the universe, I panicked, hit 'private' on my account and stared at the screen for ten full minutes. “What? ANYONE can read this?!” The idea terrified me. …And then intrigued me. I took a deep breath and rescinded the privatization. I began tweeting regularly. I followed random people from the “everyone” stream.

    I fell in love with twitter.

    That first gutsy move to go un-private in my social media has made me more gutsy and social all around. I've dropped in at random local twitter meetups and met some great folks, people I would have never known without twitter.

    I'm also a lot more likely to chat up a random stranger on the street because twitter taught me strangers are often the most fascinating people I'll ever meet.

  • http://technoearthmama.com Kathleen McDade

    It made NO SENSE to me until I read an article in the Oregonian about it. Then I didn't know who to connect with, but I decided to approach it as a networking tool, and started following locals who were writers and moms. And some of them followed me back, and finally somebody RESPONDED to something I tweeted! And then I started going to events and meeting people, and it kind of took off from there.

    I'd say most of the people I interact with regularly are local, and I think Twitter is a really good tool for connecting with people in “real” life.

  • http://peterwooley.com Peter Wooley

    I found Twitter along with @tylersticka when reading about SXSWi 2007. I figured it would give us an asynchronous way to keep up on what projects we were working on. Since then, I've realized the power of asymmetric web-based relationships (aka, stalking) and learned so much by siphoning information off anyone that has something interesting to say.

  • http://crimsoncatcreation.carbonmade.com/ Catherine Post

    Once I was brave enough to contact people I didn't know through Twitter, I started following everyone I could find. I thought a good deal of them would follow me back, especially if I commented on their work. This was not the case. Unless they were local photographers, I really didn't start too many relationships. At first I was discouraged but REALLY appreciate the photography relationships that are local through Twitter.

  • http://twitter.com/grether Morgan Stone Grether

    I think you should have had a special #hashtag for this discussion right on Twitter and just pulled it here rather than commenting. Just sayin'.

    But anyhow, I post five or ten casual photos a week on Twitpic or YFrog and get a lot of fun feedback from an entirely different audience than I do through other venues. With some interesting subject matter, I can get instant, world-wide viewers (and feedback) in a way that I simply cannot through other outlets.

  • http://www.socialmarketingtoolkit.com social tool

    When I first heard about it, I though it was just one of those forgettable social networking fads. I signed up, posted my first tweet, and frankly it's been pretty constant in my life. Like in the middle of the day, when something amusing happens, the first thing that comes to my mind, “oh this is going to be awesome to tweet” lols, lame, but true.

  • http://www.mikelegrayphotography.com Mike

    I do like the fact that it makes people more accessible, especially those who I look up to and respect as photographers. These are people who I almost certainly will never meet, but am able to interact with in quite a remarkable way.

    Having said that, even though I have a few followers now and I Tweet and RT lots of useful and interesting stuff, it very rarely gets RT'd, or any other sort of response.

    I use it to notify people of new posts to my blog, etc, but there doesn't appear to be much conversion. I read somewhere earlier this week, that the majority of people that RT links don't actually click on them themselves!

  • http://www.benjamindbloom.com Benjamin D. Bloom

    I'm not sure what I expected when I joined Twitter. A few months ago, I had to start using Twitter as a part of my day job. In parallel, or there abouts, I started using Twitter for my personal & photographic endeavors as well.

    The trick? Be honest, consistent and provide a mix of your own content, others' content, and commentary on others' tweets.

    The result? I've discovered things in my community that I didn't know were happening. I've found new restaurants, had some good chuckles, and feel more connected to my home town. Social communities that improve physical communities are the best. I've only been at it for a few months; I can't wait to see how it grows as I get more experienced and as others have the same experiences I've had, growing our local community. #BTV is great!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603673718 Paul Pichugin

    I joined twitter just to see what the fuss was about March last year, I was expecting a lot of “I'm eating dinner, I went to a movie” type stuff.. of which there is definitely an element of.. as a normal part of social interaction. But what I didn't anticipate was the level on which you can connect socially with such a wide variety of people. I've earnt well over $40K in work just through twitter alone.. that's $40K of work that probably wouldn't have come my way if I wasn't on twitter.

    - paul

  • http://www.twitter.com/_jakethesnake Jake Roden

    @_jakethsnake: I joined twitter about a year ago because a girlfriend of the time was on it but didnt really use it much, but recently I picked it up again to stay in touch with another friend. This time round, I started following people in fields that I'm interested in (photography, music, world cup etc) and the amount of content that I can devour without even searching for it is amazing. I'm never at a loss for something interesting to stimulate my grey matter.

  • http://www.facebook.com/pages/visual-song/177181612252?v=wall pogo

    very good-I get most of my professional leads off twitter, gen news and personal encouragement. integrates well for work updates and new uploads, imags available. think is much better tool than I expected. very good for quick reference, searches and professional leads. it keeps me company on long worknights–valuable communication tool.

  • http://www.facebook.com/pages/visual-song/177181612252?v=wall pogo

    twitter is great companion for uploading images– you can find all kinds of good social media leads and tips through twitter as well as send images, audio, links and references efficiently. but very nice is to have visual uipdate on something you follow– hockey or tennis… many nhl teams post play-by-play via twitter, Wimbledon and french open are twittered and tour de france is twittered. so it is ideal companion when working all night and you need diversion to keep focus and be alert. followed olympic skating via twitter and then there's tons of interesting people- olympic skaters…like it much

  • http://robertnelsononline.com nar321

    I use it to pass on information, see what followers are up to, sometimes even use Twitter search. Like the new list possibilty in Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/hilarydarrah Hilary Darrah

    I initially joined because I saw a friend's Facebook statuses coming from Twitter and wanted to check it out. At first I used it simply to get information about my community, but as I followed more and more people, it evolved into online friendships. And then from online friendships to meeting people in real life at tweetups, to organinzing my own tweetup, to having about 90% of my closest friends coming from Twitter (or 6 degress of Twitter). In addition to friends, I was able to launch my freelance writing career through the contacts I made on Twitter. Recently, one of those contacts offered me a full time job in addition to my freelance work. The #yeg Twitter community rocks, and has literally changed my life!

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