Contrary to popular belief I am not anti-Twitter. I even have and have held a Twitter account for at least 8 months but I confess it lies mostly dormant.

My friend across the waters Jim Walton recently promoted a new eBook (The Reason Your Church Must Twitter – which I have purchased) by a friend of his and co-incidently another blog that I follow. Anyway, I fired up my keyboard and bashed out my well reasoned (hah) reply. You can see the thread here, though that isn’t likely the end of it.

In my reply I reasoned that Twitter has its uses and I understand these but that the tool is limited by the person or persons behind it. What I really wanted to do was expand on the topic but a comment to a blog post is probably not the best place so I’m going to try and write a post about communicating, but give me some time to think about this one. In short though, my argument boiled down to this: Using Twitter does not make you a good communicator.

The real bottom line of my feelings for Twitter is one of apathy. It’s yet another tool for me to use to communicate with; another system for me to setup and understand – though being a tech-head the understanding came easily;  another thing to distract my time from what is ultimately more important (spending time with my family and my God); another application to import my contacts in to (I prefer LinkedIn and Facebook for now – profile links in the sidebar) and who knows how long Twitter will remain around for? It also becomes another tool for me to have to build up a “fan” base … what other reason would I have a Twitter account for if not to have followers?

I certainly don’t have the time and probably I don’t have the energy. My main reason for having the account was so that I could understand the product in case my friends asked or in case I spotted a niche that it could be used in or useful for – such as with Anthony’s eBook. Which by the way is only $5 and a well written little book if you don’t understand Twitter or its possible uses.

All that said …

I get Twitter, I do … I just simply don’t care.