The bloggers of SnarlyBoodle.com use Twitter to find a lot of valuable information. It’s not as fast or as thorough or as direct as Googling for the same information, but the home-spun anecdotal spin on things is refreshing. We can even hone our search by contacting Twitter users directly.

We can just toss a question or comment out there in 140 characters or less, adding our own tiny ripple to Twitter’s maelstrom of tweets.

But something is amiss. Most of our micro messages go unseen, we believe. Not seen by the transient masses. Not seen by dedicated daily Twitter users. Not even seen by most of our followers.

At the time of this writing, SnarlyBoodle has nearly 1,000 “followers” on Twitter. Not friends, by any stretch of the imagination, but people who have added us to their [usually long] list of “following” folks. In reciprocation, we have “followed” them. Yet our blog site is lucky to get one visitor a day clicking through from Twitter.

Every time we refresh our Twitter Home page, we see the latest list of ads, quotes, spam, and the rare snatch of a live personal conversation. Mostly we see self-interested would-be money-makers hawking their cyber-wares, who sent only one automated message to us when we signed on as one of their followers. Do they see our tweets? Do they check our our blogs? Do they engage us in a dialog?

No, no, and no.

Twitter has broken its implied promise to us. It has not lived up to the hype of its most fervent supporters. Claims are still being made by cyber-hucksters that any product announcement will convert a full 2-3% of our followers into sales. Ha! 20 to 30 sales through each Twitter announcement? I don’t think so.

Twitter is far less cozy than MySpace or Facebook, and far less cohesive than any website’s Comments section. It has been likened to being on an elevator, catching bits of several conversations with the ability to join in at any time. We find it more like walking through a convention center trade show full of hucksters and hobbyists who aren’t really interested in us or our wares.

Yes, we should have been more skeptical in the first place and paid at least some heed to the naysayers. No damage was done, however. Twitter is still a good source of random information. We’re just a little let down.

Six-Eye Jackson

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