5 Stages you will go through on Twitter
Posted: April 12, 2009 Filed under: Social Media | Tags: socialmedia, twitter 18 Comments »The 5 stages new users typically go through on Twitter…
- Creation – New account is created and the user wonders what’s next.
- Excitement – Your first tweet! Your first Follow! Excited that you did it… you created an account. You don’t yet realize how easy it was to do and that millions before you did it. All you know is that your first tweet was sent and you are stoked!
- Paranoia – ‘did that tweet just go to the whole world?’ yes! everyone can see it! This is where you learn the difference between a tweet and a Direct Message. So that Tweet you sent to me because you were following only me… well it went to just me because I am your only follower. However it also went into the global Twitter timeline! sorry.
- Realization – This is when you realize how to follow people and the power of twitter. You realize how to create a Bit.ly, how much fun Curse Bird can be, how to customize your background and more. Only your tweets are literally ‘What are you doing?’. Some people get stuck at this stage and use Twitter for personal use… never truly understanding how to use it.
- Application – This is where you apply Twitter to your business or hobby. You follow people that are relevant to your interests (work or personal) and organize them through Tweet Deck in groups. You now have a group for work and one for each of your hobbies. You use #hashtags and search for others just like you to add to your groups and this, this is where you truly become addicted. Your tweets have also changed. There is a trend to them now. Business during the weekdays, personal in the evenings and maybe hobby specific on the weekends. You have now created a connection with others that help educate, motivate and listen to What you are doing! Then you take it mobile… on your iPhone, Blackberry or other SmartPhone.
Enjoy!
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For me Twitter induced a manic state. I’ve heard that with crack you can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t do other things. All you want is more crack. Twitter for me is almost like crack. It has faded some with time and familiarity but still it captivates. I have decided only very recently to begin speaking out. Probably in large part due to the possibilities I saw and still see, in Twitter. I believe Twitter may play an important role in our near future.
I twitched a few times in the first few weeks… eyes exhausted staring at the screen waiting for an @reply to come in… I hear you!
haha, too true! That paranoia stage made me laugh because I was very paranoid about letting others know about my twitter account! but nowadays I watch what I post…haven’t really reached that last stage yet, but I probably will!
Thanks Lucy, I find the last stage is the most fulfilling. When you truly understand the power of Twitter and are able to organize it to be a natural part of your day vs. something you need to remember to do!
You only talk about the good people who follow the etiquette of twitter and use it as *social* media.
The stages of the other folks are:
1. Create a bunch of twitter accounts
2. Aggressively follow people using a variety of viral tools
3. Post spam to other people’s streams
4. Get Blocked
5. Start over with a bunch of new twitter accounts.
6. Never learn from their mistakes, and eventually decide twitter is stupid and doesn’t work.
So true! Thanks for the great addition. I wonder how many bots are on twitter… that would explain a lot. Cheers,
Thanks for the guidelines. It seems like a fine line between finding like minded people and developing relationships. It helps to have such sage advice to keep us new tweeps from making the mistakes in the first place. Hoping that I can take my passion to help others and get through at a personal level.
I believe social media is important to my entire desire to reach people and posts like this help to make sure I don’t trip up right out of the gate.
Thanks!
I’m in the “My God, WHY did I connect some of these people to my mobile device?” stage and rapidly un-connecting them. I can find out everything they ate and watched on TiVo via the website, all at once, thank you! The coolest part has been when a celeb I admired and followed started following me, too. How did THAT happen?
how come i didn’t go through the stages !? hmmm
Ahhh. Stuck in Stage 4. What the hell is a Bit.ly?
a Bit.ly is a web service that allows you to shorten a URL string. In Twitter you only have 140 characters… so you wouldn’t want to waste them on a long URL or you may not be able to fit a long URL in 140 characters. Hope this helped. Go to http://bit.ly/ to try it for yourself.
hey, congratulations on the success of your blog. i started my own wordpress blog not too long ago so hopefully you’ll have the time to check it out. good luck in the future also.
http://chicagoismynewblog.wordpress.com/
Another helpful insight into this whole Twitter business. I have read about the ’14 Twitter personalities’, but I like your take on how one develops their persona to reach the ‘application’ phase. You get a stumble!upon thumbs up and a RT from me.
I love your analysis of Tweeter! I am still on step one. I’m going to save your blog and when I have time re-read it and check out all your hints. This is my fist time blogging too. So you are really teaching me lots!
Ian:
my life is not complete without a soundtrack. Ipod while walking the dog, stereo on while answering e-mail and XM radio AND Ipod in the car. I was wondering if a better Twitter question is “what are you listening to?”. if there was an social networking ap dedicate to music listening what would we call it?
patrick
PS right now Serena Ryder singing Sisters of Mercy on the BOSE while watching the hockey playoffs
I hear you Patrick! and so have the ‘web gods’… on the 8th day and BT (Before Twitter) they blessed us with http://lastfm.com or now last.fm which is the new URL… a social network based on music. you can connect with me on it at http://www.last.fm/user/Ianbarnett and we can continue the conversation on music there if you like… right now I am listening to ‘Lena Horne – I want a little doggie’. Some classic jazz from the 40′s. Surprised… I know… maybe some Kanye will come on next!
This is a great list. At first I was thinking that it needed more, but then I read through it again and saw it made sense. It seems that the Twitter ‘vets’ get and understand these stages. This is how I generally explain Twitter to people who don’t understand it, and I think you do have to go through all of these stages to truly “get it.”
The best part of the stages is the last and final part of the 5th stage, when you can take Twitter to your smartphone. It takes on a whole new meaning. Once I finally got my own smartphone, I started to get excited about Twitter again.
I did it somewhat out of order
I went through the organized, work-/industry-related tweets first until I realized how much time it took away from real work, lol.
Nowadays, my tweets are mostly personal or commentary on what’s going on. And I have yet to take it mobile. I imagine it’s going to be even harder staying away from Twitter then!
PS.: And I have yet to check out what Curse Bird is. Off to do it now.