When a new person gets inside Twitter he usually faces a problem that he doesn't actually know anybody out there. That's actually a huge problem for Twitter going mainstream. When you join Facebook you actually can just upload your photos and tell your friends you have a new album there or if somebody is already registered you can write a mail and the person will be notified, or you can just join some groups, see the photos of people you don't quite know add some apps. The point is that a person joining Twitter feels lonely with 0 followers and doesn't really have much to do. Due to some stats Twitter has something like 10.000.000 people registered but less then 10% ever come back.
What is vital for Twitter is to make use of your own contacts so your friends can be notified on what you write. Plaxo made exactly the same thing, the only difference is they were sending too much emails without people actually knowing all of their contacts get spammed. If it's a weekly or daily e-mail - it's a service, if you get a notification on everything without a chance to easily change settings it's spam.
But lets get back to the question of getting your friends use Twitter. Even if you make them register it won't help. A couple of services are still needed to make this work and I'll add the needed ones. At first give them your RSS feed to integrate as a live-bookmark or in their news-reader. Then explain that they can generate such a feed and can just update Twitter via IM, e-mail, SMS. The right way to get real friends inside Twitter is actually not to force them, but let them watch you and reply to you without changing their habits and the way of life they are used to.
3 comments:
Twitter is still facing a number technical issues. So it would probably be best to wait for the dust to settle before "forcing" one's friends to join the party - just as you'd want your best friend to get sober before setting him up on a blind date.
For those who have already joined but still feel like they're standing at the door but nobody heard the knock, remember there is value in twitter beyond contact with the friends we already have.
At getsatisfaction.com, where twitter problems, questions, & ideas are posted someone just asked the question, "What is the best way to find like minded people." I suggested using TwitterLocal & Summize & would love to hear other thoughts.
Thanks for the comment.
> wait for the dust to settle
Yeah, good point.
I am sure Twitter Team will solve their tech-problems really soon. But the problem of not being able to interact with real friends will remain.
> remember there is value in twitter
Surely, I enjoy the conversations I have on Twitter, but I didn't get that when I registered. I actually started using Twitter 6 month after I first registerd.
> would love to hear other thoughts
I currently use the "track" feature to find people that are twitting about what interests me, but that's exactly the same as using summize. I am currently working on 2 types of thing to fight this problem: public channels by interest and a catalog where you can add your account and add tags you are twitting about and find others based on tags that interest them.
You write very well.
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