Twitter is Not Pointless, It is Pointillsm

Step back and look at the painting

Jay Cross is making a point (couldn't resist)  about Twitter by referring to the art work of Georges Seurat who was a pointillist.

Twitter is like pointillism. Up close it can be meaningless. Back away and a pattern emerges. Your subconscious shapes an image of the person from the Tweets. The whole is a phase change from the sum of the parts.

Stepping back and seeing patterns is an important skill when you use Twitter, particularly as a listening tool.  That's why I like to grab a search feed from Twitter for topics that I'm monitoring and then step back and see the patterns.    I recently came across this tool called "TweetBeep" - which is described as google alerts for Twitter - it sends you emails when someone mentions you on Twitter.

I thought this might keep you from seeing the forest through the tweets - or get in the way of pattern analysis.  But, if you wanted to be monitoring in real time and you lived in your email - then this would be a good tool for the job.

And while I'm on the topic of pattern analysis and stepping back, Chris Brogan has some advice about how to self-monitor your tweeting.

Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.

Bryan Person has started the Twitter "MeNotMe" meme in which has analyze his last 100 tweets categorizing them into me (personal), not me, me (professional - about work).   I think he needs to come up with a rating scale of egotism (see the definitions here). 

 

Comments

[Rebecca Krause-Hardie]

Wow those are three great points about Twitter. Thank you so much! I've been wondering how to follow threads of conversation on twitter.

[Account Deleted]

Great advice, Beth! Just signed up for Tweetbeep--thanks!
Twitter: @BornToFly
www.dianascimone.com

[Bryan Person]

Beth: Good idea on the "egotism scale"!

Regarding TweetBeep, I gave it a try a couple of months ago when I first heard about. Results were very sketchy for me, and I quickly abandoned it. Maybe it's worth giving TweetBeep another look?

Bryan | @BryanPerson

[bloggingmom67]

I think the pointilism analogy really works.

A New York Times article decribes it similarly: When you first get on twitter, it seems random tidbit but put together it's a novel of someone's life in short bursts. (I'm paraphrasing, but this is the gist.)

[Account Deleted]

Beth, what's your Twitter address? Would like to follow you!
@BornToFly

[Virginia]

Thank you for the great perspective , Twitter is unstoppably watchable! I have learned so much already just following you genius' and pioneers in this SM. I am a devotee and fan. Thanks for sharing all your smartness:)
Twitter: @Cars4causes

[Laura "Pistachio" Fitton]

I wonder if Jay read @pomeranian99's NYT piece, or if the metaphor is so universal that it is creeping up several laces at once in parallel...

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

It's such a LOVELY metaphor. Thanks for passing it along! :-)