The Next Pathetic Thing: The Collapse of Twitter

[Richard]

I just posted my increasing frustration to my blog, in light of Twitter's recent descent into becoming a Spam-a-thon. I expected so much more from them. If you have an interest, here's my post: Has the Twitter Bluebird Flown the Coop? Comments welcome here or there, of course.

[Uke]

Having missed the heyday of Twitter, as with most of these social media platforms, I can only say that some good has come of it for me -- finding a reasonably priced ebook formatting guy. However, overall it seems to provide little value to my life. If you're already famous, then it's a great ego massage. (for example, Margaret @wood's nearly half million followers).
I can't believe that the endless tweets by authors hawking their books really sell a lot of copies -- because most of the tweets are going to other authors.
Fortunately my real world prospects get better every day.
Twitter seems like everything else in this realm -- a way for platform creators to make techno serfs (or free content providers, if you prefer) of the rest of us.
And Richard, I'm not sure what jumping the shark means either.
Uke Jackson

[Richard]

Yeah. No kidding. When it was good, it was good. I learned to be very selective as to who I followed, and when the spam started flying, I'd un-follow, but now? One thing that seems to be working is that my email inbox is gradually becoming more spam-free.

[Steven]

Awww, man! And, on the day after someone told me they put my book out on a twitter feed. Now, think of all those twitterers that are gonna be mad at my book - gad - mad at me.

I have been so scrupulously old school for so long that I missed twitting too. (Purposely misspelled) ;)

[John]

When the hosts on local sports talk radio shows start talking about how many Twitter followers they have, and celebrities start getting followers in the millions, and then my wife, who is totally non-techy, says everybody in her company is Tweeting now and she needs a Twitter account, that's when I figure it's reached the point of saturation. I had a Twitter account in the beginning, didn't use it much for a year, then started Tweeting like crazy. I could never see a rise in my book sales as a result of any of my Tweets. I think all of these social networks are somewhat gimmicky, and they can distract authors from their writing.

John

[Erren]

I think John is right, but can't stop tweeting yet. It seems, though, as if your tweets just get swallowed up in the great maelstrom of other tweets and no one seems to notice.

[[deleted user]]

I too have gotten somewhat off the Twitter bandwagon. All I get now is spam, for the most part, and then a few good quotes posted by other readers and authors. I definitely agree that it's become more of a spamming site, where people only want to sell things (how they do it, I do not know), but I still find good people to follow, and informational tweets every once in a while, so I keep it.

I personally like my blog and Google+ the best, as they are more social, and I can keep in better touch with people who share the same interests as me (and the fellow authors that I enjoy).

[Anne]

I got started on twitter back in 2010. Never got into it even then. Even then, it felt like people were tweeting nonsense. It's hard to have a conversation with someone on twitter. It's like you constantly eavesdropping, but never really part of a conversation.

[Richard]

I guess for me, it was that arm's length thing that I liked. A little freedom, and no explanations. I also still hope I can continue to use twitter for recovering useful links to real information that isn't just a sales url. Still get a few every day.

[Darlene]

For me, the frustrating thing about Twitter is that it seems an endless loop of writers talking to writers. I don't think I've really reached any readers through it. But, that said, I have run across a few interesting blogs and websites. What I really hate is authors who rack up thousands of "follows" but do not reciprocate. If someone has ten thousand followers but is following fewer than a couple of hundred others, I pass.

[Richard]

I guess that makes some sense, but I don't universally "follow" everyone who follows me, especially those marketing business services. It's all about parsing the information that comes in, down to a manageable size. I do always try to send things out that my followers will appreciate, based upon my reading their profiles.

[Christopher]

I think the challenge with Twitter is that folks expect it to be a social network. It's not. It's a news feed... literally a wire service. If you aggregate searches, create lists and view at as a headline generator it'll be much more useful for you. Good at building a network for influence, it is not.

[Richard]

That fact, Dianne, along with being able to control what came in as well as what went out was unique to Twitter, but is being lost in the avalanche of material. I never wanted to chat up a large pool of followers through my tweets. I wanted to utilize Twitter, primarily, as as associative tool for my writing brand. Not as a pitch medium. Rather, to generate interest through shared interests; to reinforce rather than be the driver of action. As I wrote to another author this morning, the idea was to toss muses out there for mutual benefit. Harder to do now, than it was.

[Terry]

Uke wrote: "Having missed the heyday of Twitter, as with most of these social media platforms, I can only say that some good has come of it for me -- finding a reasonably priced ebook formatting guy. However, ..."

"jumping the shark" refers to the episode of Happy Days when Fonzie went waterskiing while wearing his leather jacket and, yes, jumped a shark. It's seen as the moment when the program peaked and everything after was all downhill. Now, it's a standard term for the moment when anything - a TV show, a website or Twitter - hits its peak.

I will point out that when people use it, they are almost always wrong since it's hard to discern when something passes it's peak and starts to decline while it's happening.

However, I agree about Twitter. I am trying to market my first book and I'm amazed how many of my Followers are marketing their books.

The one thing I have found truly useful on Twitter is, as someone above said, to Follow every news source and reporter who covers whatever subject you are interested in. Then you get a phenomenal real-time news feed because the reporters are tweeting continuously about everything they see and hear.

[Sherri]

Overall I'm okay with Twitter. My one gripe is writers that make EVERY SINGLE POST about their writing and only use it as a book-sales tool. To me, social media is about letting people get to know you so they find the inspiration behind your writing. When every tweet is a book plug or novel excerpt, I think you only care about book sales and not about "connecting" with readers like you're supposed to.

[Richard]

Not every writer. The word is getting 'round at last.

[Uke]

Terry, thanks for that. Good to know for sure.
Uke Jackson