The Ultimate Guide To Twitter

So, after spending a week exploring all the facets of Twitter after more than tripling my followers in 48 hours, I've become quite the expert on the darling of the social networking media marketing blitz thing whatever. I guess since MySpace died and all the kids left, it got boring reporting on predators talking to themselves (and stripperbots), so the media jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. (I could continue linking well into this sentence, but am now bored with finding links.)

And so, it seems, has everyone else. Tons of celebrities and social media experts and bloggers and SEO giants and other people who really have nothing else to do all day but think about themselves in 140 characters or less and share with everyone the enormity of those thoughts are on Twitter. And so, here's my Ultimate Guide to Twitter, for everyone who is considering hopping on the tool and formulating their Twitter strategy to fame and fortune.

First off, It's important to note that, if you actually have a Twitter Strategy, you're a dickhead. This isn't an insult, it's just a statement of fact, and the more we know about ourselves as people, the more we can grow and evolve and achieve oneness. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but better you hear it from me than from someone you actually care about. The fact that you can't just enjoy a service for the silliness of it and actually decided to build a "strategy" around it exposes you for who you are. I'm honor-bound to point it out to you. You're welcome.

Now, in formulating your Twitter Strategy, you should decide if you're going to take the slow, arduous, hard-fought path of amassing tons of people who don't give a shit about you and only follow you in the hopes you'll follow them back so they can grow THEIR numbers, or if you'll take the quick and easy path and follow the top Twitterers who follow you back, insult them in various ways so they reply with your name, and watch your ranks swell. 

You'll probably pick #2. It's the quick path to self-perceived glory, so I really have no doubt that that's what you'll do. I kinda did it the hard way, and I recommend the easy way. Why? Because no matter what you do, you will end up following these people anyway. It will happen. Just watch. And once you do, you'll figure out what I've figured out:

Twitter, by and large, is a gigantic circle-jerk of marketing and SEO "Experts" and conservative Republican dipshit retards, all tweeting and following one another in the hopes that they'll get followed back to make their numbers look great, then go off and sell their strategies to companies. Oh, and Barack Obama.

 

There you go. That's all you need to know about Twitter in a nutshell, if you're planning on using it in a strategy of some sort.

If you're not, basically Twitter is a service where you can let people know when you're pooping, eating, or have a clever witticism which you will inevitably butcher so that it fits into 140 characters, confusing everyone. And by everyone, I mean the friends of yours who don't mind knowing all of these things and decide to follow you, which are the same friends who already know all these things about you, which means it'll get boring eventually. Until one of you follow Trent Reznor or one of the Marketing / SEO "experts" or one of the wingnut republican dipshits and the whole cycle described above starts up. 

Enjoy!

***Updated March 23, 2009 about 4:45pm***

I figured I'd just let this caffeine-adled ranty post was going to just sit on its own and be what it is, but given some of the comments, I figured what the hell, I'll respond.

A) I've actually been on Twitter since sometime early 2007, shortly after it was the hot masturbation fodder at SXSW. I've only now decided to abuse it to figure out what the hell everyone's so excited about.

B) Sorry that I've upset some people. It's hard realizing that your reality is a thin veil of your own perception, filled with hot air... And it hurts when that veil has holes poked in it. I know. It'll be okay though, soon enough you'll grow bored of Twitter and find the next thing to be an "expert" about, co-opting it to be some mainstream vision of what you deem important. Trust me, it's very Battlestar Galactica this way - it has all happened before, and it will all happen again. That is, until someone finds the gene that causes dipshitness and someone else builds a bomb to chemically neuter all of you who have it.

C) Twitter has NO VALUE. None. Period. It is a service for saying 'hi'. Using it for more than that isn't against the law or even against the grain of it's intended use... Just know what it is. The only reason Twitter is popular right now is because people have decided Twitter is popular. It's the Paris Hilton of the tech world... Known for it's name and not much else. It's not like Facebook or Google, where the data being collected is actually worth something (Facebook knows more about you each and every time you use it, and long after you've left, the MASSIVE database all about you is still going to be worth a lot to the next hot service looking to sell you things. Twitter? Well... They have NO valuation whatsoever. They can't charge for tweets, because everyone will drop it in a heartbeat. They can't append ads, because both everyone will drop it AND the bandwith issues [Fail Whale shows up when someone decides #penis is a hot topic and tweets it to death... do you think Twitter can actually handle ads too?]). Twitter is the 2009 equivalent of the Tulip economy. It's only value proposition is it own name.

D) THIS IS JUST A STUPID BLOG POST. Think I'm full of shit? Great! Move on to another blog (preferably one about SEO Marketing Blue-sky Long Tails) and shut the fuck up.