Is twitter dead?

Or at least the twitter I joined when the idea was fresh and we didn't have a clue about social marketing. Remember when it was a quick way to update friends and find out what they were up to, like facebook without all the shit apps that came with it. There were times I could spend hours with messages flying back and forth, these days I struggle to get anyone to respond to a question or even comment on a fellow tweet. With the emergence of twitter apps like tweetdeck, ubersocial etc. everyone is busy twittering what they are doing without ever checking the timeline to see that perhaps someone cares enough about their tweets to respond.

Twitter was once a way to connect with people in a friendly way, it has now become one big marketplace where everyone is trying desperately to get someone to buy their product, check out their latest track, #teamfollowback, give me a shoutout, RT this because my goldfish is sick and it will make him feel better.

I'd guess that around 85% of twitter users operate in this way. They don't want to get personal, they can get their message out and not care about anyone else. Companies now use this to send you their link to entice you into buying their products, gone are the days when you could ask a company about a product as 99% of them don't even read their replies anymore.

Social netwokring today has become a massive market, you just need to look at Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter to see that, everyone just wants to make that quick buck. I don't think there is anything wrong with people trying to make a living as everyone is entitled to make theirs and their families lives better. Call me old fashioned but I miss the personal touch of making a connection with someone and taking a few moments out my day to to see how they're doing. These day's it's just become a tweet seconds after with yet another link.

Whenever I compliment one of my fantastic followers, anywhere from 2-5 new Twitter followers selling porn in some way.

I tweet a joke, I get followers trying to sell me comedy tickets.

Hell I even retweeted a story on global warming and I get 3 new followers selling me global warming shit.

Now I'm not saying I haven't used twitter to help move along an eBay listing, because I have done, most people have. But I have never done just that. I always try to find a way to connect with at least half a dozen of my followers a day even if it's just to say they made me laugh. Most of the time these go unanswered, sometimes I do get the odd personal comment and these are the ones that make me feel good as it means I'm not just wasting my time, that I'm not just another message on the screen but they know me and think I'm worth 140 characters.

Maybe I'm taking it all too seriously. Maybe I should care that K is in a good mood because she hit her diet targets for the week or that L has had a shit day at work and needs cheering up. The sad thing is I do care about these things as that's what Twitter was like in those days, when it was still the new kid on the block, when people who were on it used it to keep in touch with people not use it as one big popularity contest or to sell me some shit I don't need.

In the 90's we had something called netiquette (look it up) and at the start of 2000 we had something called etiquette. Now we're into 2011 I don't even think such a word exists.

I will be linking this on Twitter and I hope it stirs up some controversy. I hope it draws a few comments even if they are all negative, because that means there is still hope that the real twitter is still alive and there are people out there willing to do more than just post a link to an eBay listing or just stopping by without posting something worthwhile.