Ok, I've been following the Twitter "thing" for a while now and have been going back and forth on the value of the service as a professional.  On a personal level, I have about zero use for Twitter.  I am not interested in a lot of the noise that comes across Twitter.  My personal life has enough commitments, noise, and distractions in it already.  "Hey look - Bob is at Outback".  BFD - I have a kid's soccer match so I won't be zipping over there to join him, and frankly, I really don't care he is at the Outback, even if I did have time since he would have invited me to go along if he was interested in my company. Call me anti-social (I'm not), but I'm not a fan of the "pop in". An extreme example perhaps, but at the end of the day, I like my "not connected" time.  I'm a firm believer that "always connected all the time" is not a good thing no matter how cool it may seem at first.  Yes, I know I don't have Twitter in my face, but if you don't, what is the real value of it as compared to the myriad other forms of communication we already have.

From a professional perspective, I have been thinking about the value of Twitter to my job with Microsoft.  While I am not entirely convinced that there is a great deal of value, I stumbled across this blog post on the 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter- A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners that has caused me to re-evaluate its value proposition.  For good, bad or indifferent, a large part of my current job is marketing.  While I consider myself a techie first and foremost, I find myself needing to think a lot about marketing.  That is not entirely a bad thing since it has caused me to stretch a bit and learn some new skills. When it comes to social networking (not thinking just about Twitter), there are a lot of different pivots, but the two that I am most interested in are how social networking aids or detracts from building your personal brand and standing in the community (and in my case, in particular, the developer community) and the value of social networking as an overall tool to EFFECTIVELY reach audiences with IMPACT.

Looking at the first issue, I can certainly see how Twitter can add to your ability to build brand - if used wisely.  The article I linked provides some great ways to go about doing that.  Not all of the 17 different ways of using Twitter apply to me, or at least, I don't want them to apply to me. ;-)  I view Twitter through the lens of being a communication medium for my role with Microsoft as opposed to being about me as an individual.  I envision using Twitter to send out notifications about important info, new podcasts being conducted or posted, when I am at a developer event, etc.  It will certainly not be about me going to O'Malley's or that I am in the bathroom (yes, I have seen a Twitter from someone saying they were in the can - sheesh!).  Doing those types of things allows my core market to be plugged in better and more "immediately" and thus have more of a connection.  I see value there.  So with that in mind, I set up a Twitter account with the not so imaginative name of MSFT_MSP.  I had thought about something a bit more catchy, but considering that someday someone else may be doing my job, I figured I would go with something the identified the role instead of the person. 

When it comes to reach, Twitter is as good a tool as any.  But from an IMPACT perspective, I think it is seriously challenged.  If someone only subscribes to a handful of Tweeters, then there is some impact.  But my second hand experience has been those that Twitter do so a lot and have a ton of stuff being dropped in their lap.  It's hard to stand out in that noise, much like it is hard to stand out in the blogosphere, but with Twitter I have to do it in only 140 characters! ;-)  Yes, those 140 characters can lead to something with more impact (is Twitter's biggest value that it makes tinyurl.com really useful again???), but again, I'm just one voice in a very crowded room.

Well, it's time to take the plunge.  I've got some recommendations on some good Twitter clients so I will have to check those out if I start following some Twitterers.  For now, you can follow me if you want! ;-)