Comments on: Twitter: It's About Real Relationships

By: Cedric Gross

Cedric Gross — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:10:51 +0000

Dear Jessica,

you composed a very fine article.

Happy Twitterversary 2 U!

Thank you very much

Cedric

By: Its All About Relationships- Jessica Levin | Meetings Podcast

Its All About Relationships- Jessica Levin | Meetings Podcast — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:41:26 +0000

[...] using Twitter for your business or for personal use? This is a really great article by my friend Jessica Levin CMP from Seven Degrees Communications. She spoke at the E4 conference recently and I wanted to point you over to the article because [...]

By: Michael M McCurry, CMP

Michael M McCurry, CMP — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:09:05 +0000

@stepnold

Hi Stephen, in response to the question you raised above with Jessica I am adding my perspective. Regarding “real relationships” with 4,000 plus followers, your point is well taken. It is pretty much impossible for anyone to develop relationships or read the content of that number of people. Applications such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, or Seesmic offer tools to filter through tweets helping users find interesting content using relevant keywords. I regularly leverage those tools for that purpose.

Very important, though, is the reach of your own Twitter messaging. Theoretically, the more followers I have, the greater potential reach I may have with my messaging. For example, If I send out a tweet my goal is somewhere along the way someone or hopefully many of my followers will see enough value in that information to forward it on to their followers. (and so on and so forth) That is the viral nature of Twitter and incredibly powerful.

By seeking to connect with people having similar interests (which I do) leads to an opportunity for collaboration, shared learning, and development of “real relationships.” I have experienced firsthand business opportunities and friendships evolve as a result of communications initiated or supported by Twitter.

The potential uses for Twitter are many, including to support events, and reputation management. Many people do choose to use it as merely a casual social platform. Needless to say not everyone chooses to utilize Twitter the same way.

I have not seen recent statistics for “inactive Twitter users” but I would guess the number is high. At the end of the day I don’t care about the 50% or so people classified as “inactive” … I care about the other 50% that do engage themselves with this amazing social media tool.

I look forward to Jessica’s presentation in DC as well!

By: James Parker

James Parker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:17:57 +0000

Jeff
You are so right. It’s the randomness of the intial contact that allows for the continued opportunity to open dialogue. These same attributes are how I explain to potential users why our 3D virtual environments are better than the 2D experience, when they ask “what’s the difference between 2D and 3D”. The randomness of the 3D avatar based environments lends itself to the random networking opportunities that our brains are programmed to act on.

By: stepnold

stepnold — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:41:21 +0000

Jessica,
Great post.

I would be curious to hear how you create ‘Real Relationships’ with your 4,335 followers. I signed up to be number 4,336. Isn’t it a little artificial to define these as relationships, rather than a dialogue thread? Honestly, how much time do you have for developing, or even reading content from these connections. Additionally, isn’t the current metrics on Twitter that 50% of users are not active.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a supporter of Twitter and I do think it has a purpose. However, I am also careful about some of the hype that is sometimes proposed and find myself questioning what is the true value of new media.

I look forward to hearing your presentation in Washington, DC.