Friday 10 June 2016

I Just Don’t Get Twitter

Let me apologise in advance. This article has very little to do with trading at QVM but I just feel I need to get this out of my system.  Is it just me, or are there others out there who don’t quite get Twitter as a communication channel?

I am a reasonable technically adept communicator. I use a PC, a tablet, a smartphone, and I even have a smartwatch that I can use Dick Tracy style to make phone calls. I email, SMS, use Facebook and WhatsApp, and I have posted on Instagram. I write articles on a website that automatically goes out on a Twitter feed but otherwise I have very little to do with Twitter and I can honestly say I don’t seem to be missing anything.

I regularly read my news from abc.net.au and they use twitter feeds a lot, but I have never seen the point of reading just 140 characters about a story. If it is worth reading I want the full story. And what is all this about hashtags? Hashtags are those words or tags that follow the hash sign #.  A user once told me that you add a hashtag or two to identify your story and measure its readership. Really? I guess that could be useful.

And before I sound like a complete idiot to regular Twitter users I can see some handy uses for Twitter. News reporters use it a lot and when you want to get the latest story out really quickly I see the point. But, otherwise using Twitter just doesn’t seem a priority and I welcome advice from anybody who would like to tell me what I am missing.


In the meantime I will get back to QVM market matters and once again I apologise for getting distracted over a non-core matter. If you want to complain just tweet me.

By Greg Smith