YATP… Yet Another Twitter Post.

While vacationing in sunny Florida, I managed to see two interesting posts on Twitter. The first was a couple of days ago from Katie Tierney’s Confessions of a Recruiting Newbie blog – I’m twitdicted. In her post, she argues she’s addicted to Twitter, and finds is a powerful tool to find and disseminate information. She calls the state she’s reached on the Twitter Maturity Curve to be twitdiction. Then this morning I saw JP’s post on Twitter – Musing about things I can do with Twitter that I couldn’t easily do before Twitter. JP tells the story of how he was pointed toward an interesting article in the New Yorker from a good friend because of her tweet about it.

When I explain Twitter to people who have not used it, I clearly am doing a bad job because they just don’t get it. The don’t see the utility. They think I’m a bit crazy. What I learned from Katie and JP is that maybe my explanation is not all that bad after all… Maybe seeing the utility is something that comes in an “aha!” moment after using the tool for a bit. Maybe, just maybe, it comes after jumping in feet first, trying it out, and seeing the power of the completely disjointed conversation you are having with friends and co-workers who, in this day-and-age, might be nowhere near you and frankly you may have never met.

Yes, I’ve never met Katie or JP. Katie and I work together, and have seen each other on Skype and have spoken countless times. JP is someone I’ve come to respect through his blog. Today I follow Katie on Twitter, but more and more I think I’m going to look to people like JP and start following them too. I’m realizing more and more the useful information that I’m missing only following 13 people on Twitter. Intellectually I understand the value of weak ties, but Katie and JP put that power into words for me today.

So, added to my New Years Resolutions… Start following more people on Twitter… Okay, back to the beach.