Do you Twitter?

Lately, everyone’s been talking about Twitter, the Internet’s latest social networking craze.  Sure, the micro-blogging site, which allows people to post 140 character comments, has been around for a couple of years now, but it seems to me that it has only recently caught the interest of mainstream media. I’ve seen several articles about it over the past several weeks.

These days, many online editions of newspapers allow readers to comment.  In each of the Twitter articles I’ve read, every single one had at least two or three commenters who said that people who Twittered were “wasting their time.”  Of course, these people were saying the same thing about Facebook and other social networking sites as well.  I’ve replied to these people that Twitter is sometimes necessary for work, especially in marketing.  However, they often don’t “get it.”  They continuously repeat that people who use Twitter are just lazy.  I’d then reply by asking them whether they golf, and if they do, whether they do with clients.  How is golfing with clients not the same thing?  You’re having fun (for those who like the game, anyway) and you’re working.

I think this is both an age thing and an industry thing.  If you’re not in marketing, PR or anything related to promotion, social media just isn’t used or considered as part of work.  But I’ve seen people in journalism use it – several Toronto Star and Globe and Mail writers have accounts.   Hence, at the minimum, I don’t think that people should be criticized for using it for work-related reasons.  Twitter might be fun and past-time for one person, but it can be a necessity for another.   If you’re in any of these industries and you aren’t utilizing any form of social media, you could actually slowly fall behind and become irrelevant.  

NOTE: Prospere Magazine has been on Twitter since October 2008.