As I write this, I’m less than five minutes away from giving this explanation to a visiting business executive that had said something to the effect of, “You Twit? I don’t get Tweeting or Twatting or whatever it is. I don’t care what Ellen DeGeneres is doing.”
In cases like this, I have a pretty standard explanation.
My father loves to read and will often send me articles that he thinks I’ll find interesting. But he’ll actually send me the article, not a link. Sometimes it’s a section of newspaper that arrives in the mail and other times, it’s a scanned PDF. My father, much like myself, is a little quirky and sends me great articles that I probably wouldn’t find on my own.
That’s exactly the way I think of Twitter: it feeds me great information on my interests that I probably wouldn’t find on my own. Whether it’s marketing tips from Lisa Barone, UFC updates from Josh Nason or news of Troy, NY, from Kim Mazor, I’ve discovered a group of people that I feel provide value to my daily life.
The great the thing about Twitter, as opposed to Facebook, is that it doesn’t require a two-way connection. While everyone I named above does follow me, there was no requirement for them to do so. Thankfully, they feel I’m interesting enough to them that I earned their follow.
Ultimately, Twitter is just another way to select which news you receive and from which sources. Some people do care about Ellen’s thoughts, or even Paris Hilton (although I’m not sure I would call that “news”) while others prefer to follow CNN or NPR.
So while my father will continue to fill my mailbox with great reading, I’m checking Twitter to find my news.
