Twitter On Trial

So I’ve started to Twitter. Again. Kind of.

I believe Twitter is (or soon will be, at least) essential to movement-building. And since I’m in the business of movement building, I needed to get over myself and take the plunge.

John Piper has begun tweeting (do you capitalize “tweeting”?)—you can read his blog post on why. Michael Hyatt (CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing) recently shared his “Answers to the Top 10 Twitter Objections”.

But I’m still a bit disillusioned.

Here are the main things I don’t like about Twitter:

• It’s just too much! So far I’m following fewer than 30 people, and the stream of tweets is already overwhelming! People tweet way too much. If it weren’t for TweetDeck (see below), I’d have given up already.
• I like Facebook better as a social-networking interface. It’s just a personal preference. But given how redundant Twitter and Facebook are in the social aspect of my life at this point, I’m gonna stick with FB for updates on my friends for now.
• The WORST: The amount of spam I get, especially the porn kind! Within a couple of days of creating an account, my profile was overtaken by “followers” of a sexual nature who could not be blocked/removed. I logged out and changed my password, only to have my account (gratefully) shut down for several days because Twitter “noticed” too many unsuccessful attempts were being made to input my password. I’m back up now and those porn-spammers are gone, but I continue to attract unknown followers—many of them scantily-clad women. At least I can block them now. But I never had this problem with Facebook.

Here are some things I do like:

• As I’ve mentioned before, TwitterSearch can’t be beat for up-to-the-minute news coverage. And I like Twitter’s “saved search” feature.
• With the downloadable TweetDeck (not officially associated with Twitter) software, I can successfully manage my tweetstream.
• Following @JohnPiper. Several times a day he posts profound thoughts that refocus my mind on Christ and eternity. I had previously found subscribing to the Desiring God blog too overwhelming. But this is just right.
• Following @AmazonMP3. Every day a different album on sale, usually for $2.99 or less. Plus 50 albums every month on sale for $5. (July’s offerings include Coldplay, Mariah Carey, Leonard Cohen, Beach Boys, Billy Joel, and Marvin Gaye.)

I’m still willing to have my mind changed on all of this. So please help me! What do you like about Twitter? Who/what are your favorite entities to follow? Have you had a spam/porn problem similar to mine? What am I missing?

PS: If you want to follow me (while you still can!), I'm @stephnannen.