“Twitter is what you make of it.”
I hear the phrase daily from new users. Of course, those masticating on their new-found Twitter treat are right. I hate to say it, but they are. Speaking of hating newfinders, why do we so often resent people who discover something long after we’ve swum in its delights? Shouldn’t we gladly welcome them?
As we welcome all the new users and celebrate their enthusiasm, I’d like to ask you something:
What are you making of Twitter?
I get a kick out of asking questions on Twitter. (Facebookers and Myspacers, you’re lovely people but most of you have 12-36hr response times. Sorry, but I’m dealing with a TV-dinner-shaped attention span here.)
Sunday evening I thought it’d be a wondrous time to ask the brilliant minds on Twitter a thoughtful question: (I thought it was, at least.)
Imagine what your answer would be to my question. Do you have a 140-character response fixed in your mind? Excellent!
Rick Wolff took the time to craft the following:
I’m pretty certain you didn’t see that one coming. I know I didn’t.
That’s the beauty of Twitter. If you’ve not used the service before, imagine what it’d be like if every text message you sent was copied to every one of your phone contacts. You are also copied on every text they send. That’s Twitter. It’s mayhem. Like most mayhem involving people, the results are unreliable and the rubbish smells enough to make the beauty hard to swallow at times.
That is, until a complete stranger tells you that your brain is a fish tank.
If my brain is a fish tank and my ideas are fish that swim around in it, I have a lot of questions to answer.
- Am I careful to change the water regularly so my ideas stay healthy and clearly defined?
- Do I keep many tiny fish or do just a few big fish that eat everything in their path?
- Should I give my fish away, keep them for myself, or sell them to the highest bidder?
When somebody tells you your brain is a fish tank, questions like that just come up naturally.
Have you tried asking thoughtful questions on Twitter or other social media platforms? You probably won’t receive thousands of retweets, likes, thumbs-up, etc. But the responses you do get will often be thoughtful, insightful, and sometimes downright awesome. Give it a try!
Is there something you’ve been thinking about that you’d like my take on? Drop me a question in a comment. I look forward to our conversation!
Click to feed the Twitter fish!
My brain is, like the fish tank I had when I was 12. I loved to throw stuff in there to see what would happen. I once put in two baby salt-water flounder I caught in Galveston Bay. They looked pretty but found out the chlorine in tap water & absence of sea salt were deadly. Fish died, they didn't belong. Or the time I pitted two male betta fish against each other (I know that's horrible but when your're 12 it's fun), some ideas oppose each other & can't be reconciled. And the time I had a bunch of guppies & forgot to feed them for playing Nintendo.
So I've become a compulsive favorite-er on Twitter. I favorite ideas I like but fail to go back and see why I thought they were worth another look, so they accumulate and die 'coz I don't feed'em. Any thoughts on how to handle that? Anybody else a favorite abuser?
I like what Seth Godin said,
“If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.
If you walk around town with a little shovel, you'll just end up digging thousands of little holes, not one big one.”
A
What a great thought and original response! Thing is, are you tropical or stillwater, Seth?
I've found Twitter to be home to some of the smartest, friendliest and downright questioning people around – it's great, really great.
Some of my best blog posts (views, personal favs., etc) have come from initial conversations on Twitter and I think that says it all about the platform's strengths.
Now, what can I ask you that is worthy of such an open-ended question at the end? Okay, here goes:
What was in Marsellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
Cheers, fella!
If my mind is a fish tank, twitter is a whole ocean of ideas and thoughts. I spend a lot of time twittering with my closer friends on twitter, but sometimes I just watch the stream of hundreds and hundreds of people scrolling by. I get some of my best inspiration that way. And posing a question will almost always give you some unexpected response, often times from someone you never really engaged with, who then becomes a new friend. Great post as always.
Hi there,
I feel more like a sponge on Twitter as there is so much great information to filter through, assimilate, and bookmark!
Miss seeing you.
good question as usual.. twitter to me is like a vast space of ideas and information. I'ved learned so much from the people that use the platform, from the links and even from just watching the conversations that transpire between people. Why I wouldn't have even discovered you and your wonderful articles if it wasn't from Twitter. Whenever something bugs me I would always throw in a question, or even a thought, or when I need info and in minutes streams of info come in and up to me to filter. I have also used some of the stuff i read through everyday as inspiration as to what people would be interested in reading when I write for my personal blog as well as bitrebels.com
Cool post as always Seth. Thanks for sharing
This post made my morning! Lol, what a fabulous metaphor (I am now following Mr. Wolff =)!
and it's also still harder to find the “best feeders” for your idea out there, but Twitter is still developing and over time I can see solutions being introduced to help with these issues 
.
I think Twitter is definitely much like a fish tank with “schools of tweets” streaming by all the time and, at least in my case, me trying to jump at and take on whatever interesting ones I see at the time. Which goes back to what Wolff originally said, “where ideas accumulate, fail to get fed, and die”: services like Twitter, make it so easy to both immediately get thoughts out there as well as have them run into a host of people who can add their two cents, bounce them back and ultimately “feed them”. Granted there's still a lot of relevant and beautiful ideas out there I sadly miss out on
Funny, I've never favourited even once! I'm sure it's useful for a lot of people, but I know myself and chances are I'll get distracted by some new tweet before I make it to the button
. I really should give it a try though.
Sometimes you don't even have to ask a question, you can just take a look at what's being offered. Or check in with someone you know to be thoughtful and witty. Here's one of my fave's from last week. “Pessimism loves company. Optimism builds companies.” Write a blog post with that as the title? Heck, you could write a how to book for business.
I think I lean more toward the tropical. Takes a lot of effort to get the salt water balanced perfectly though. =)
Twitter's great for content discovery…which is what Google uses it for as well.
MW's briefcase? You ask the oddest questions. His soul?
Hi Roger!
Posing a question about a medical issue or car trouble tends to get the most interesting and emphatic responses. =)
Just like the real ocean, Twitter is losing a bit of its shimmer from all the junk that's been building up for years. A Twitter clean-up is much easier and more cost-effective though.
Happy swimming!
Dude, if you don't want a question, don't be the answer maker.
You're missed as well! Finally getting stuff up and running again over at TDP. You were such a vicious commenter though. Perhaps I'll block you this round…but you'd get a kick out of that. =P
So glad you stopped by and best of luck with those cowboys!
Hi Misty!
I'm glad you included the link to bitrebels. I've seen nothing but great stuff from you guys over there!
If you ever need some amusement, ask for help diagnosing a physical ailment or car trouble. The answers are AMAZING. =)
Thanks!
Awesome summary!
It's evil of me, but I keep laughing every time Google sends a query for “ideas for fish tank” to this post. =)
I've discovered that much of the “great stuff” on Twitter is condensed into just a few streams by people who simply seem to know what's going on on Twitter. I follow them and let the rest wash by. Works for me at least.
Thanks!
That's great!
A favorite of mine (told by a very cranky boss) was “Volume hides a multitude of sins.” Not as cheery or chipper, but would probably make for a good chapter in that book of yours.