On the internet no one can hear you tweet

For those who don’t know Slashdot is a news technology site which reports solely on ‘nerdy’ computer things.

I came across an article yesterday published on the site about Twitter. Twitter is whats known as ‘micro-blogging’, in that your limited to a specific number of characters so theres only so much to be said in so few words.

Some people I know do use Twitter and its interesting to see how their habits differ, when it first came along I generally think people were more enthused about logging in and using it. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the ‘mood’ status on LiveJournal where rather than reading a full post a quick summation is enough to get the overall tone of the post.

Other people I know are still furiously tweeting away and have used it to chat and meet new people from across the globe who are also users, in a way a less efficient version of MSN messenger.

But getting back to the article it basically stated that although teens use Twitter no one is actually viewing their profile and therefore not reading their tweets. Even though Twitter can be seen as a fad and its questionable how long it will hang around I do think that this is something symptomatic of the internet.

I tend to think that the internet encourages us to become slightly narcissistic just because we’re on the internet we have a tendancy to think that everyone will be interested in what we’re doing and thinking almost every second of the day when in reality nothing could be further than the truth. When you start a new website people don’t just find it because its there, you have to engage in promotion and SEO to make people find your site.

On top of that why should people be interested in what your doing specifically over someone else? What is the purpose of your site or what your saying? I’m not really interested to know that your sitting on the toilet or that your changing your car tyre or doing the dishes via your Twitter page.

So next time your thinking about your website spare a thought for those illusive lesser spotted ‘visitors’, why they’re there and why they should keep coming back.

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