Follow-up: Why programmers should twitter
Last week, I wrote about why programmers should twitter. My article met with heavy criticism at DZone. Today, I intend to answer people’s doubts and try to approach the subject from a slightly different angle.
Not just small talk
A lot of people seem to think that Twitter is all about “sitting on patios” or “my MBP did these things”, and that’s understandable. There is a lot of generally useless stuff and a lot of people just use it for that. You don’t have to. You don’t have to follow anyone that only posts that and you certainly don’t have to tweet that way. It is what you make of it.
Only one piece of the puzzle
Twitter is great, but it’s not a good replacement for anything except for the questions you might have asked on IRC. You still should be subscribing and reading DZone and individual programming blogs. You still need to try to make it to your local programming group meetings. You will still need to check out Google Groups or random forums for some answers. If you do it right, though, you can enhance your experience by engaging others who choose to be in community with you.
It requires extra effort on your part to sift through posts to find stuff you’re really interested in. I usually spend about 20 minutes a day reading and tweeting. This time doesn’t come from my work time, but my personal time at home or my lunch break. You might not have that kind of time. You may not have an iWhatever to check it while you’re waiting for your coffee to brew. Or maybe you just don’t like people and have no intention of interacting with anything without a screen.
Don’t just consume, engage
I find that a lot of programmers tweet about what they’re working on and give sneak peeks (because they want opinions) to twitter before any of their stuff hits the mainstream aggregators (DZone, Proggit, whatever). The big advantage here is that this is the point of “involvement”. You tend to play a more active role in the programming community when you have access to things in early stages. Furthermore, you open yourself up to more joint projects because you share a greater connection to mutual followers.
I’m not saying that you can’t engage on DZone or whatever, but I am saying that it’s harder to do so. For me, all those “stupid fluff” tweets get me more in tune with a larger variety of programmers habits and abilities.
Conclusion
Obviously, Twitter is not for everyone. The bottom line is that you can’t knock Twitter until you’ve given it an honest try. Like a whole week, not just a skim through someone’s tweets. It’s not going to be what you expect but I think most of you can find a way to make it valuable.
Now, a poll
I’m introducing polls (requiring Javascript for you subscribers out there ;) to this blog, starting with “How useful is twitter to you as a programmer?”. I want you all to come vote and then comment on why you voted the way you did. Be specific, too. This is not going to be a flame war, and I reserve the right to re-word all mean-spirited comments to sound like toddler temper tantrums.
I tried using it, I found it was a superb waste of time. For every useful communication I got, I read 100 useless ones. Posting felt like shouting in an empty room. Reading felt like the lowest content RSS stream available. I suppose I just didn’t know the right way to do things, but I didn’t like it.
It can be hard to find good content. At least you gave it a try before passing judgment and we all can respect that.
Eric,
I complete agree with you. Using Twitter has been a great help in building relationships with other engineers, including ones outside the standard user’s group radius of my local network.
While the “off-topic” sorts of tweets could be labeled as a waste of time, I view them as a way to start conversations with people when I see them face-to-face. There is a fair bit of noise, but it’s not something I can’t manage and it helps build a sense of community that’s very much worth it.
Just my 2 cents :)
Well.. twitter works for me; if you know how to use it then you can advance your career no end.
In 2 weeks of making my latest twitter account, I’d gained 14 of the worlds best dev’s as close contacts and started working with them, my monthly income increased 10 fold to a 6 month salary every 4 weeks. 3~ish months in and I can safely say I’ve got a great set of contacts who are well regarded and it’s certainly opened the right doors for me.
Disagree all you like, ultimately who cares – certainly works for me, always has when used properly and if your missing the point then put your efforts else-where – nobody is forcing you to do anything :)
nice follow up, and kudos for the original post.
Wow. I won’t say I’ve had that success, but I have definitely had much more contact with top-tier programmers due to Twitter. Congrats!
I keep trying to comprehend why Twitter has gained any sort of popularity at all and I can never see any reason. I can honestly say that I have never seen a single piece of useful information broadcasted in a tweet, with the single exception of links to a interesting blog posts perhaps, which is a moot point since I tend to get those links from the different news aggregators I visit throughout the day. Am I missing something? Is there any use for twitter whatsoever outside of networking and casual communication?
“Outside of networking and casual conversation?”
No. You see the networking itself is the biggest benefit. Getting to know other programmers and crowd-sourcing your endeavors. Ideas. Opinions.
Twitter is the CB radio of this generation. A gimmicky, fad where 99.9 percent of the traffic is garbage and a waste of time. Can you say “short attention span”.
I just don’t get it. How on earth do you find, say Drupal developers on this twitter deal, and quote “get involved”? I have tried sending out questions related to Drupal but so far after months of trying, I have gotten zip. What am I doing wrong?
I generally find people in a specific area through their blog. If you were to blog about Drupal yourself it’d help because Drupal devs are more likely to follow you or even find you if you haven’t found them.
If you can’t find enough blogs there is surely a Google Group or forum you can find.
If you’re interesting in finding people that share same interests as you, you may want to look for the topics that interest you. Then you can see what other people say about those topics and if you deem the person’s post interesting, then you could add him/her to your network.
You could do the same by putting specific topics into your posts, so that other people can easily find those.
Just prepend a # sign in front of the topic in your message and you’re good to go.
Then you can retweet other people’s interesting posts, and some people retweet my posts. That way if you have something interesting that you said, the word can spread around.
Retweeting is just putting RT in front of the message.
And of course you can also mention other fellow twitters in your posts by using the @ in front of their name.
So these are just some of the ways you can better utilize twitter.
I found the thread on DZone fricking hilarious. People are bitching about not having time or desire for something “frivolous” like Twitter…. while they are participating in a comment thread on a social news site. I believe that’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Thanks Chris.
I was surprised how many devs just thought it was all link-sharing and meaningless banter. I’m really hoping to kill that misconception.