Posting to Twitter Now

By Jake • January 19th, 2009 • View Comments

Twitter isn’t for everyone. So, if it’s not for you, stop reading now.

Recently, I created an account for this blog; if you want to follow, it’s theappslab, natch.

Not sure why it took me so long to do that, but it’s there now. So, the obvious follow up question was what should we do with this account?

I posed that question over the weekend, and Dan replied thusly:

Dan's tweet

I’ve never thought that reposting all my blog posts to Twitter was very interesting or useful. Can’t say we need the extra promotion, since we’re not selling ads or trying to generate more traffic. Still, Dan’s reasoning was sound. He suggested that Twitter would offer a notification that we had a new post here, reminding him to read.

Which is good, considering that those of us who read feeds tend to get behind, and this offers another way for people to interact. So, I’ve installed Twitter Tools a plugin written by Alex King; for now, we’re just using the publish posts to Twitter option, but if this gets popular, there are other features I can enable.

So, if you like follow theappslab, and you’ll get a tweet each time we post. I’ll be monitoring if you want to tweet @theappslab. You can thank Dan, or generally sound off about this experiment in the comments.

Maybe you have other ideas about what we can do with the Twitter account. Add those too.

Incidentally, we had a boo-boo over the weekend, but we’re better now. Sorry about the extended downtime.


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  • bex
    worlds are colliding! bex is getting upset!

    Now people are going to accuse you of having a "blog vomit" twitter agenda:

    http://bexhuff.com/2008/12/whats-your-twitter-a...
  • Maybe, but we have documented proof that at least one reader (Dan) found reposting to Twitter useful. Besides, people aren't required to follow; it's another, optional, channel.

    Twitter is highly subjective anyway. It's rare that people I follow interest me 100% of the time. We'll see how this goes.
  • I don't think that's a good use of the blog's Twitter account unless some immediate feedback is requested. If I follow someone on Twitter and they only post "here's a link to a new post on my blog" tweets, that looks like spam to me. If I want to read your blog, I'll subscribe via RSS. I think the @theappslab should be for content that is too small for a full blog post.
  • That was my initial hesitation too, but after thinking about it in light of Dan's suggestion, I feel better about it. Here's why:

    1) We do offer multiple other ways to follow content, including RSS and subscription by email.
    2) Each of us has his own Twitter account: jkuramot, rmanalan, ppedrazzi. Anthony never uses his, and I can't recall it offhand. So, theappslab account isn't really posing as anything other than a team account.
    3) Posting to Twitter allows another stream for those interested (e.g. Dan).

    So, for now, we'll see how it goes.

    I frequently post content on my account that doesn't warrant a full post. You could follow me for that. I may/may not also post from theappslab, depending on how much time I have.

    Did you have any other thoughts or suggestions? Thanks for adding your opinion.
  • In general, I would agree that reposting blogs is not a great way to use an account, but for me at least, I tend to neglect my feed reader as most of the blogs I'm interested in reading post their new blog entries to twitter either directly or via an aggregator (like OraNA). And like you said, with each of you primarily using your own accounts, the group account doesn't seem appropriate for much else. I generally don't like "group" twitter accounts where multiple real humans use it. That is, except in the case of product/service support things (like @VMWareFusion and @comcastcares, to name a couple).
  • The OE also mentioned using the account for stuff we don't blog about, so maybe I'll do that when I remember.

    If we attend conferences, it will be useful to broadcast stuff like where we are, when we're speaking, etc.

    Overall, I think we can evolve what we use it for, and thanks to Dan for motivating me to repost blog entries. Now I know at least one person finds that useful.
  • Jake, since you asked, my suggestion re using the account for stuff you don't blog about was in addition to announcing blog posts. I personally don't object to blog post announcements in a Twitter stream, as long as they aren't the only things in the stream. Then again, I like "things you may not know about me" memes, so a few people may discount my opinion somewhat.
  • Yeah, that's what I assumed. I've got the account in Twhirl, since TweetDeck doesn't do multiple users. So, I can broadcast as necessary.
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