By: Stephen Bray
I haven’t thought lots about Twitter recently. I haven’t been using it – or so I thought?
There have been lots of reasons for this. Firstly a busy business and family life reduces the time I can devote to Twitter, which can be a distraction.
Secondly, I find that once I’m following more than a few hundred people it becomes difficult to relate directly to most of them. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that “the limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size and relates to all human relationships, not just Twitter. If you have a respectable neocortex you may even be able to relate to as many as 150 people.
When people become older and their friends die off they tend to collect vicarious relationships by becoming captivated by soap operas. Some take to Twitter to chat, just as years ago they may have installed Citizen’s Band radio.
Recent research shows that it’s not the size of your neuro-cortex that counts, but the number of connections you make. It seems that our brains may be adapting as our social networks, formed by services such as Twitter, increases.
But even these conversations have been drying up on Twitter recently, so what’s the real point of having a Twitter account?
Quite simply it’s something that people in the flow can use as a personal news feed. You may not be Barack Obama, or Anton Kushner, but if you’re active in business you’re missing out if you don’t use Twitter for the purpose it was designed, which is as a micro-blogging site.
Many reportage and street photographers, for example, keep their followers informed about their movements and workshops using Twitter, sometimes even sharing shots using specialist applications such as TwitPic, or by referring people back to their regular blog posts.
Search my name on-line and in most countries, once you’ve got passed the entries for my singer songwriter namesake who people Google because he was once related to Madonna, and you’ll begin to hit my pages. Twitter will be up there quite prominently. Why?
Because every blog post I make, or like, is tweeted. When my friends, such as Ida Hormer, put out a charity appeal I send out a tweet. Twitter is still the easiest and most efficient way to display what kind of person you are to the world. That’s why I’ll be keeping my account intact.
Indeed, when I checked recently I found that far from abandoning Twitter I’ve been using it as my news feed practically every day.
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Retired psychotherapist turned copywriter living on a Mediterranean Beach, just twelve miles north of Rhodes. Currently writing a definitive on the relationship between psychoanalysis and photography. Internationally recognised photographer. |
