Blogging Tips

Twitter is a great way of communicating with many people at a time and keeping up to date on certain topics but does it stop us communicating on a more personal level?

I have used MSN messenger for many years and I have a contact list as long as my arm with all my friends, work mates and web contacts but more recently since I’ve been using Twitter I’ve almost stopped using messenger to communicate with anyone.

Has anyone else done the same?

I had a number of people I would chat to either on a personal or professional level about numerous things and that enabled me to understand that person more if I did not already know them. Asking questions etc was easy to do and it was only between us. Now I have opted to use Twitter over messenger I have lost the ability to engage with others in the same way. It is not just me either, many of the those I chatted to on messenger have also moved onto Twitter, so I direct message them to interact with them or I am forced to use email or other means, of course if I knew them then this isn’t too much of an issue but if it is someone who is a web contact for example then you can’t simply pick up the phone can you?

Have your online communication methods changed?

Twitter is coined as one of the top social apps of the decade with many tweeting on it on a daily basis and more are adopting it all the time. The problem I see with twitter is that once you decide you would like to chat with someone then you are stuck unless they are already following you. You are forced to contact them publicly to see if they might follow you to then allow you to direct message them.This is not ideal as it makes you feel vulnerable and a bit silly but how could we get over this?

What do you do when you are in this situation?

I think one solution could be to possibly send a request to them if you try to direct message them they could be alerted that someone is trying to message them directly and then they could have the choice to accept it or not. This is just an idea as I know it is a minefield with all the spam flying around but I do feel there is a need for a way to communicate above the normal @ reply and to allow us to communicate on a more personal level.