For some Twitter is a useful and important tool for maintaining contact with friends and colleagues, and for staying connected to news and events in the world at large, or locally, or as it relates to their hobbies and interests.

One of the good things about Twitter is that you can engage with it just as much as you like: follow one person or organisation and never say anything, interact with a small group, follow hundreds and spend all day tweeting yourself — it’s up to you.

As Twitter develops and increasing numbers of people use it, trends are starting to emerge. Recently ReadWriteWeb teamed up with Summize to look at what people are talking about in the Twitosphere:

What we found is that there are three main types of conversations going on. First, there are status updates of every day occurrences such as, “getting coffee,” “check out this post on X,” “going to sleep,” or other mundane life things.

Second, there are short term memes where many people talk about some event before, during, or after it. These conversations are usually short lived — ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. For example a TV show like “Lost” will have some buzz, before, during, and for a short time after the show airs, but will drop out of the stream very quickly. We saw that happen with “LSD” when the drug’s creator Albert Hoffman died last week.

The final type of discussion we see on Twitter, are long term memes. These are topics of interest that people talk about for days, weeks, or even months. Politics or new video games are great examples of these longer term discussions happening on the platform.
…

Conclusion

While technology, politics, and geekery (sci-fi movies and video games) tend to dominate the long term memes, people are discussing all sorts of things on Twitter — from sports to pop culture to cooking.

[Via : What People Say When They Tweet - ReadWriteWeb.]

People love to talk about the mundane, the trivia — it’s the stuff of daily life; it keeps us connected. Then the ‘buzz’ emerges: the new movie, the latest episode of Coronation Street. But gradually and occasionally the long-term or important topics arise.

Could your organisation use Twitter? Could you stay in touch with colleagues? Monitor breaking news? Arrange for your ‘clients’ to support one another (an example might be quitting smoking)?

See the Webguide Tools: Twitter section for more information about what Twitter is and how to use it.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Share this post

Hide Sites