I’ll admit it upfront: I’m a lousy Twitterer. I try to give it a go every month or so by tweeting frequently, replying to other peoples tweets and generally participating, but then I usually drop off the face of the twitter-earth within a day or two — mostly because I find that it consumes too much time and is too great a distraction – with little or no reward (for me at least).
I’d give it up completely if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of people seem to find it really useful – or maybe it’s only the Silicon Valley types that find it useful and everyone else just finds it fun. But either way, it’s getting a lot of attention.
So what’s the magic formula that makes it useful/fun? Only follow people you know? Only follow a small number of people so that you don’t get snowed under? Spend all day doing nothing but twittering?
What I’m looking for is the tipping point of Twitter – note that I’m not talking in terms of when Twitter hits a critical mass of users and breaks out and becomes a raging world-wide success overnight – but rather what is the tipping point for when Twitter actually becomes useful to you. When you get the balance right – so that you’re following the right number of people, have found a balance between getting work done and twittering – and find Twitter more useful than, you know, not useful.
So, the Twitter becomes useful tipping point, where is it?