Is Twitter really social networking?

Every time I have gone back to Twitter I feel like I’m shouting into the wind. It seems to be the weakest platform for social engagement. Very rarely are my tweets even acknowledged and I am starting to wonder if Twitter is a platform for speaking one liners and not for listening to anyone.

If I go to facebook, or this forum, I at least get some engagement and feedback.

So what is social about Twitter? It feels like a one way conversation and as social as a billboard sign.

If you believe Twitter is social please tell me here and explain to me how you have found it social.

There is a lot of noise on social networks–millions of posts per day.

Are you posting things that other people might find interesting or useful?

Are you following other twitter feeds?

Are other people following your twitter feed?

Are you using hashtags?

If you aren’t following or people aren’t following you, visibility for your tweets will be extremely low. The only way for people to see your tweets in that case is by randomly stumbling across them.

In order for you to get some engagement, you have to engage with others.

I often listen to well known people in the web industry on podcasts, and they often talk about Twitter being their main source of contact with the world—for sharing things, asking questions and having conversations. When I check out their Twitter feed, I do indeed find them doing all this, and am amazed by all the feedback and helpful responses they get. So it certainly works for some. You just have to be very active on this platform and have a decent circle of contacts for it to work, I guess.

Just as a simple example, I noticed that John Allsopp was working on a conference site recently and tweeted about an issue he was having with a responsive heading. He got lots of interesting replies, which ultimately helped to solve the issue, I think.

Oh, I see. I wondered why people followed thousands of people. I deliberately kept mine low so as not to be overrun by traffic.

So it seems as though the reason I have been unsuccessful on twitter is because it runs counter to my ideology. I am not into popularity contests.

It’s somewhat social I guess. There have been times when I’ve seen a friend’s tweet or they’ve seen one of mine and Direct Messages were exchanged as a result.

But I work from a desktop so character limits are no problem (eg. some people quick text while motoring :eek: ) and Facebook or other methods are much more effective for interactive communication.

That sounds like a kind of sour grapes response. :stuck_out_tongue: It does seem to be true that Twitter works better for those who are better known, but perhaps it’s a chicken and the egg situation. How do people become better known? They do good stuff and put good stuff out there, and what comes will come. If you enjoy sharing stuff, interacting and offering value, something like this will work well. For the rest of us, just tweeting occasionally and little else won’t be worth too much.

That said, there are other uses for Twitter. If you search for something like “CSS” on Twitter, you get a quick view of all the things that are happening in that discipline, and you can retweet and/or respond to things of interest in that way, without following hoards of members. That can be quite rewarding, too, and it’s another way to make meaningful connections.

No, its not sour grapes. I can assure you I won’t be losing any sleep over it.

However it does seem to me I was working with a premiss that turned out to be false, and it turns out that twitter rewards social climbers, which is what surprised me. However my original purpose in using twitter had nothing to do with social climbing. I assumed it would work similar to a forum, where people can engage in conversation with others simply and easily, make new friends with those of similar interests. It appears I was mistaken in my assumptions.

At this stage I will probably close all my twitter accounts and concentrate on Google+ which seems a better fit for my ideology. I just need to find a good mobile app for it.

Why, when I just confirmed that it can indeed work in this way?

concentrate on Google+ … I just need to find a good mobile app for it.

There are some nice iOS apps for it. Can’t speak for other platforms. I find G+ more confusing and harder to use than Twitter. I fear it will turn out to be a bit of a dead loss. They seem to have gotten out of the social blocks too late over at Google.

Well, I am presuming you are referring to using well chosen hash tags. It would be interesting to know what % of twitter users engage via hash tags or is it a bit of a gimmick? Would be interesting to see some stats.

My perception of Twitter, and their API, is it lends itself strongly to robot twitters. That is I wonder if I am getting no response from my tweet replies is because there is a software script at the other end simply talking on twitter through an API. I know that is possible with Google+ as well but its less likely, perhaps. Originally I thought twitter had larger reach. I imagined it was like joining up on a large forum. Turns out that any promises of global reach are only half truths as it depends on how many followers you have. Contrast that with going to a well populated forum nicely divided up into categories and sub-categories. You have a pretty good idea how much engagement you’re going to get before you even make one post by looking at past replies and date stamps of previous posts. In contrast Twitter promises alot but delivers little.

Facebook and Google+ suffer from the same problem but to a slightly lesser degree. Facebook differs in that it does have special interest groups. I just don’t like their web interface much.

The other problem with twitter is that I often can’t adequately say what I want within 160 characters. Its just too short.

No, I was referring to what I said in my first post in this thread.

Turns out that any promises of global reach are only half truths as it depends on how many followers you have.

Hm, it seems you have a fixed idea of things and aren’t reading comments here. As I said, you can search topics on Twitter, such as “CSS”, and see at a glance all the tings being said about CSS (whether via hash tags or not). You can reply to those tweets if you like. I’ve had some really nice conversations by doing that. And you don’t need a single follower to do that.

I often can’t adequately say what I want within 160 characters. Its just too short.

Yes, it’s certainly not a blogging platform. But if you’ve written a blog post, tweeting about it is a nice way of getting it out there—especially if you drop a few keywords in the tweet. Sure, it may not get much or any response, but you never know.

Twitter is really very good site for social sharing. There are a lot of crowds. You can get responses and feedback from other.

For this:
You have to post very interesting post, user have to find the post useful.
You have to make your profile strong, by following others profile, like other posts, etc.

As Facebook has the “Create page Facility”, and the friends that helps to get more engagement of users in these sites, though twitter is having more PA, DA and PR than twitter, still the engagement is not good, there are some reasons:

  1. Though you get engagement in Facebook, are you sure that it is your targeted audience, now we can’t. But in twitter only the person who is following us can get our post and the person is really interested in the post and information that we are sharing.

  2. And it is up to us to make their interest level, so that they can keep in touch we us.

  3. All these social sites are not only take & take, it works in give &take relationship, you also give proper response nad credit to other’s post then they surely respond you.

  4. Use Di versed ways to post, sometimes post, sometime re-tweets, mention a place name, mentioned a person name, all these things make your account more interactive.

Yes Twitter is a social networking. Most of the people are using twitter & they post daily news of new things, business related post etc.They are very much engaged with twitter for all matter. You can use it to communicate with huge people, you can follow huge people, people also follows you.

Yes twitter is real social networking site. I think twitter is number one social site. In twitter you gain lot of visitor.

Twitter is one of the better social sites because it is so connected with the media, brands, and celebs. There is a lot of noise on Twitter and tweets get lost in the random thoughts sometimes, but if you follow the right people, you can learn some interesting stuff going on in the world and people’s lives. You also have to work to build up a following to have a useful experience on Twitter too.

Yes twitter is a popular social networking today. In twitter get always upgrade news about anything. Almost every second it gives news because people are very much connected with twitter.

Yes, Definitely Twitter is a world’s best social networking site for sharing his/her views with yours followers and get a valuable insight for your services.

Twitter is one of the world’s best social networking channel for sharing your views. To get more response & feedback from twitter, make your profile strong & follow other people & like the posts. Post content user friendly & informative.

Yes friend

twitter is best social promotion site here you post your information in very shot character like 140 character with # tage too follow any other user.

This has to really be one of the most interesting posts on social media! Twitter works its way up slowly but steadily i guess, but the forerunner will remain facebook as far SMM is concerned i guess.