6 Reasons I’m Glad I Joined Twitter

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For the longest time I refused to do the Twitter thing. Looking back it seems stupid but I just would not join the craze. Two months and 350 updates later, I'm a proud card-carrying Twitter fanboy. Here are 6 reasons I'm glad I joined Twitter.

I get more reader interaction

I recognize that many of the readers of this blog follow me on Twitter. I love when I get comments on my articles and that has spilled into my Twitter account. Every once in a while I solicit feedback and there's never a shortage of responses. I value the time people give me when they respond so if any of you read this, thank you for responding to my quips.

I need a place I can vent to fellow web developers

When I see that a customer who required CMS capabilities has completely messed up their website by using 28 colors and sizes of text or another customer has a 12 year old managing their website, I simply MUST share this with fellow developers.

There's no better place to throw a quick razz at web friends

While developers usually respect each others choices in tools (PHP vs. Rails, MooTools vs. jQuery), I couldn't, however, live with myself if I didn't take a quick, harmless shot at jQuery and Firefox team member @reybango. Of course, he never hesitates to throw a shot my way too! Just a little fun to help us get through the day.

Sometimes you just want to make a pithy comment

Whether we know it or not, we're all smart asses. Really. And every once in a while we need to rail off a relatively meaningless, witty 140 character or less sentence. Twitter is the perfect place to do so.

It's fun to hear what other programmers think about non-web topics (aka devs have personalities?)

Web is a huge and ever growing topic, but I don't always want to hear other developers talk about it. What does @chriscoyier think about peanut butter vendors? @emwendelin spent a night with his uncle -- how did it go? It's good to get a taste of what other techies are really like away from the computer.

You get 140 characters or less

I don't have time to write novels and I don't want to read yours. The 140 character limit forces me (and you) to be brief and creative with your messages and that's the best thing in the world when I'm busy but need a little intrigue.

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Discussion

  1. I see what you’re saying, but to me, it’s lost some of its appeal of late. I find that people who don’t know me never respond to my comments on their tweets.

    Perhaps I’m just a billy-no-mates :)

  2. Instead of Twitter, I got addicted to plurk. I’d like to make a twitter but I’d neglect one service for the other if I made a twitter account now.

  3. Yeah, Twitter’s great. I tried out Plurk, but it requires too much maintenance. On the other hand you don’t get as many comments/as much feedback on Twitter, so it’s somewhat of a tradeoff.

  4. try jaiku instead David – there are alot of hardcore developer on that service

  5. I was exactly like you and never really saw interest on twitter, just a few weeks ago when i published my “BlogFolio” to illustrate our agency latest works that i created my account, and use it now to add small messages to the blogfolio…. like announcing a new contract or client.

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