Ben Haddock

My thoughts on Twitter

I tried using Twitter while at University but found it fruitless (I didn’t know who to follow, and barely any of my friends could be bothered using it), and it was only since working full-time, surrounded by friends/co-workers who actively used the site that I was encouraged and inspired to follow suit.

Make of it what you will: Despite my incessant tweeting of whatever I find interesting or inspiring (largely design-related), I mainly use the service just to see what people at work are up to and to share in-jokes and amusing quips with said people. However it’s of course a very useful and efficient tool to discover news and products related to the industry, if you’re following even just a select number of people that share your interests.

Cull, cull and cull some more: Don’t be afraid to unfollow people if you don’t find their tweets particularly interesting or useful, else you’ll find Twitter to be an unwieldy, time-consuming beast of spam, self-congratulating and inane musings (and that’s just my profile) — that’s from my experience at least. And I’ve never seen the attraction in mass-following people in the vein hope that they’ll return the favour, it seems bizarre and impersonal.

A completist’s nightmare: I’m sure I’m not in the minority here, but I’m compelled to read every single tweet from everyone I follow. The list of people I follow is trim, so this is easily manageable, but it’s as though I’m reading an eternal novel and I naturally need to read everything chronologically — so I’m checking Twitter constantly to almost see ‘what comes next’. Maybe I’m just strange?

Spoiler: This was written as part of an upcoming article on the Code Blog.