Twitter

Before this assignment I had created a Twitter account for another class assignment, for which we were asked to participate in our choice of social media. I chose Twitter because I had heard that it was gaining popularity, and I figured if it was for a class I might as well buy into the fad. After finishing the assignment I honestly did not see the value, I viewed it, like many people do, as a massive collection of Facebook statuses. It was not until I worked as an intern at the Chamber of Commerce last summer, that I started to understand the potential that Twitter can have.

My second day as an intern at the Chamber I went to a presentation about innovative social media success stories. By the time the second speaker was finished I was convinced that Twitter could be extremely useful and effective for businesses and organizations, as well as individuals. However, over the last week I have learned that businesses or organizations’ Twitter efforts are only successful if they are implemented correctly, not if they are just jumping on the bandwagon. The organizations that I thought were the most interesting to follow over the last week were OSU PRSSA, Columbus Underground, and the various Marketing/PR Resources because the information was valuable and extremely relevant to me. I got frustrated with some of the media users that I was following because I got into the habit of just skimming over a majority of the large amount of information they were posting. The individual users that I enjoyed following the most were the ones that I felt were sharing information in the form of links or other users tweets.

From my combined experiences I think that Twitter can be a very valuable resource for me and other students who will be entering the job market in the next few years, both as a way to find information and to network. I am actually going to try to continue using Twitter after this assignment because it could be a great way to start learning about the career community that I eventually want to be a part of. However, there are two factors that I think will discourage me. The first is that as a whole Twitter is very overwhelming, I sign on and within five minutes of exploring I’m silently, or vocally, swearing it off all together because it is just so much information. The second is that I feel like unless I sign on 16 times a day I am never going to catch up with the rest of the Twitter universe. I think my conclusion after this assignment is that Twitter is something I want to be a part of, but in order to do so it will have to become a part of my routine, somewhere in between e-mail and Facebook, not penciled in the reminder section of my planner.