Has Twitter gotten lonely, or is that just me?
I love me some Twitter. I wasn’t one of the early adopters, but once I was on board, I was hooked. One of the things that I loved was the possibility of connecting with complete strangers over a tweet. I would reply to an interesting tweet and strike up a conversation with people halfway across the world. And tweeps would do the same with me, simply reply to something I had tweeted. Believe it or not, I have made many real friends like that, people that I’ve met in real life after developing a Twitter friendship first.
But it feels to me like Twitter’s socialness is changing.
Twitter Changed?
Twitter has become more commercial (like every other social medium after a while, it seems there’s no escaping that), but it has also become more distant, less involved. Let me make this practical, because I’m curious to see if you recognize this:
- You reply to someone’s tweet and they ignore you, even though it was a nice reply
- You post something honest and vulnerable and no one responds
- The people you once started following because they tweeted such interesting stuff now only do self promoting tweets
- Your timeline looks like a bad mashup of bloggers trying to ‘sell’ their posts, bad memes, and quotes that you’ve seen a thousand times before
Seriously, do you recognize this?
I was exchanging some tweets with some British friends of mine recently about this, and they felt it, too. Twitter feels lonely, one of them remarked, nobody seems to care anymore. We all agreed on the increasing commercial character, and the lack of community that once was.
So I’ve decided I want to be the change I want to see (talk about cliche quotes!). I have made myself a little Twitter resolution that looks like this (this holds true for days I’m actually on Twitter, I rarely tweet on the weekends for instance):
- I will retweet at least five tweets a day from others
- I will respond to at least 10 tweets a day from others
- I will tweet two tweets a day max with my own stuff
- I will respond to any and all pain I see in my group of people I actually know, whether it be disappointment, illness, frustration or whatnot
This is what Twitter was supposed to be like, remember? Back when we agreed that it was more about others than about ourselves…Let’s hope we can bring some of that back.
Do you recognize this lost ‘socialness’ of Twitter?
How would you try and change this?
[Image via susanne anette via Compfight cc]
Karen Rainwater says
While I have noticed a change in Twitter. I haven’t found it personally to be very different. I still have conversations on Twitter. Both where someone responded to my Tweet and where I’ve responded.
The change I’ve noticed is something like being at a small intimate party, and gradually more and more people come. You are still able to have private conversations, but the surroundings are getting a bit louder. And, you know fewer of the people personally. 🙂
Rachel Blom says
I like your analogy Karen, makes total sense 🙂
Karen Rainwater says
By the way, I notice at the bottom, just after the “Post Comment” button, there are a couple of boxes to be clicked. The one about “follow up comments” I get. But, what does the “Spam shall not pass”. I clicked it on my last comment, because after all none of us like spam. But, what does it actually do? I’m not going to click it this time. Just to see what happens.
Oh, LOL, I get it! It’s an alternative to those annoying “type what you see in the box”. Very good!
rcarmstrong says
What I think is happening– and I believe it happens with every “social media” platform at some point, and in some form– is that the focus is shifting away from the “social”, and more towards “media”, which is why we may be seeing more promotional (for lack of a better word) noise among the conversations.
Take Facebook, for example. Rather than connecting with other people, we’re seeing more and more ads and invites for games and other promoted material, and the user approach has evolved into one of accumulation, rather than curation.
That said, I’ve always compared Twitter to a cocktail party, where you can “pop in” to different conversations, so I’m also not entirely surprised by this shift.
Rachel Blom says
I agree, I’ve seen this shift on other social media as well. It still annoys me though.
Eric Dye says
I agree, Rachel. There is more and more noise and far less conversation. I am trying to make my own shift personally and even for ChurchMag’s social media. I think you’ve really hit on something with this. 🙂
Rachel Blom says
Thanks Eric. I hope if more people do this, we can change it back somehow!