Twitter has long been one of the giants of the social media world, but it has also been the social network that causes the most confusion for non-users. Widely used for both personal and business accounts, and an important factor in the relationship between social media and SEO, it pays to use and understand Twitter, but the concept could always take some grasping. While on Facebook it is clear what the idea of using it is, whether as a normal user with a network of friends or as a business, Twitter can be a little more mystifying.
For one thing, on Twitter you have one to many relationships rather than one to one – you can connect with people who don’t know who you are like celebrities or the official accounts of brands. For another, almost nothing on Twitter is private – the idea is to broadcast and interact on a mass level rather than to have personal conversations with people.
Messaging
What has always felt a little at odds with the way most people use Twitter – to broadcast and receive information across a huge network of people – is the direct messaging capability (known as ‘DM-ing’ in the Twittersphere). For years you have been able to send a direct message that is private, but only to people you follow who also follow you back, and you still would have to stick to the 140 character limit as you do with public tweets.
The Issues
Considering that if I, and another person, are both following each other, and have a reason to message each other in private, you’d assume we had some kind of relationship already. So why would I choose to talk to them over Twitter in annoyingly short messages, when I could use Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Skype or some other more practical means? Twitter never really got widely used as a private messaging option between connected people, and instead DMs became used more for promotional purposes, or for things like customer service issues – you could DM someone from the support team of a company for instance, after tweeting them to say you had a problem to discuss and them adding you.
Making Twitter Direct Messages Better
Twitter has changed two things about DM-ing – the first earlier in the year and the second this week. The first change was to offer a setting that allowed you to receive DMs from any Twitter user, not just those you follow. The second, very welcome change, removed the 140 character limit on direct messages.
While these changes are unlikely to make people switch to thinking of Twitter as a viable private chat platform, it will make it easier for things like customer service conversations, or to enable any other kind of chat between brands and customers. It may also encourage people to actually engage their Twitter followers in conversation more, knowing the chat won’t be frustrated by the character limit.
The character limit will, of course, remain on public tweets.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1J40gUI via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1PAnC6Q
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