Does Twitter Make You More Efficient?

"Twitter is a time-sucking, endless pool of dripping messages..."

In order for a tool to make you more efficient it needs to replace or enhance a function you were already doing in a different manner. While I haven’t found any personal functions for Twitter to enhance, there is a huge function that Twitter does make more efficient: global information sharing. As evidenced by how information began to stream out of Haiti shortly after the earthquake struck, Twitter is definitely one of the most efficient forms of communication that spans the globe.

To answer the question, then, does Twitter make you more efficient, the answer is definitely NO. Twitter is a time-sucking, endless pool of dripping messages that cause you to click and read, click and read, and then tweet out your own clicks to read. But without that constant stream of posts the world may still be looking solely to journalists to tell us what’s going on after the fact. Twitter may be enabling the most honest, immediate and pure form of information sharing available (assuming you can manage to balance the information against the quality of the sources).

While I’m not intending to judge whether Twitter is good or bad, it’s simply not an efficient use of a single person’s time. In spite of the extra work it takes to use Twitter, I continue to use it because I find that it connects me to new people, uncovers interesting things (mostly other people’s businesses and obscure articles) and allows me to build single-serving relationships (to steal a line from Fight Club) with people all over the world. What I hope Twitter can do is help me connect with people who I specifically want to meet, uncover information I uniquely care about and build a smorgasbord of relationships that repeat and last.

What is Twitter doing for you?

Follow @EfficientCEO or me personally @WalkerRichard

Comments

[Kristin Runnels]

I hate Twitter. It makes no sense to me. I prefer my Facebook Status Update bar, instead...and honestly, how many outlets does one need to "update" the world of their business? People have Twitter linked to Facebook linked to their phones linked to their chat accounts....it's mind numbing.