Come on in, the water is warm! – Thoughts on Getting Started From a Twitter Convert

After much thought and deliberation, we at In Good Company finally took the plunge and joined the twitter revolution. There is much to say about all the uses of twitter, from the ridiculous to the informative, or the entertaining to the noble. (For what I think is a thoughtful summation on Twitter as a vehicle for both absurd and important see Daniel Lyons recent article Don’t Tweet On Me.)

Being a fairly private person and a “light” facebook user, I initially had some fundamental opposition to the idea of broadcasting disconnected thoughts to probably disinterested parties or “followers”. It seemed like untimely blurts. Perhaps I was just jaded by reading one too many stupid status updates on facebook (I agree with Elizabeth Bernstein’s apparently provocative post on facebook’s impact on friendships). Not to mention the angst of having to recruit followers…“would I have any?”! (It is a few days in and I currently (only?) have 40, though admittedly some seem to be along the ilk of my “good” Nigerian friends with lots of rich uncles itching to give away money).

However, as I have become more comfortable with the idea and as our business and member communications have evolved, Twitter went from something clearly beyond my comprehension to actual solution to two needs that I had.

Specifically…

1. Sometimes I come across something cool or actually do have something short to share, and it doesn’t actually warrant an entire blog post.

2. Also, for the members that work at our space, sometimes we have space reminders (ex. Closing early tonight) or want to share something location bound (ex. Waffle truck is outside NOW).

So we set up 2 accounts. @ingoodcmpny is aligned with this blog and seeks to connect and share with cool information on small business, innovation, and the new work economy. @igcmembersny is for IGC member only and is a brilliant and easy way to share this specific news with a target audience.

I also began to be intrigued with the idea of getting real time information about people and businesses that I find interesting, want to be in the know about, and literally ‘follow’.

This may seem totally obvious to twitter vets and evangelists, but I was actually quite wary of inviting a lot of new information in to an already crowded stream of content and data. For me at least, I had to get to a place where I was already comfortably digesting the other medium that I care about (blogs, magazines, online news content) before I could make space for this new and potentially frenetic medium.

Anyhow I am far from tweet mastery and have a WHOLE lot to learn, but for now, I am satisfied just to get my feet wet and explore around.