Thanks to Sam Houston, CM for GamerDNA, there is now a comprehensive list of game industry folks who use Twitter.
Ryan Shwayder of Nerfbat brought up an interesting question:
Wondering why so many people use Twitter… I don’t care what people are doing throughout their entire day. I already have a blog for this.
That’s generally one of the first things people say when I tell them I’m a Twitter addict. “Oh great, a place where people update every time they go to the bathroom or are eating food”. Admittedly, I used to say the same thing before I developed a group of interesting people that I follow. Twitter as a solo experience is an incredibly dismal and almost pointless experience. And, unfortunately when you first register for Twitter – you have no followers or followees. It makes for a boring timeline of conversation, which means when someone starts tweeting their stream looks like this:
Cuppy is going to the mall today! Yay!
Cuppy is excited that she dinged 80!
Cuppy thinks that San Diego is beautiful. Wearing shorts in January = CRAZY
Once you follow a few people, you start seeing a conversation take place.
Cuppy is wondering if she should watch Milk or Slumdog Millionaire.
scoobydoo @cuppy You should definitely watch Milk, it’s a fantastic movie.
Feconix @scoobydoo @cuppy I don’t know, Slumdog Millionaire was pretty good – but I recommend Man on Wire instead.
Cuppy @scoobydoo @feconix thanks guys!
Cuppy is going to go watch Man on Wire because she trusts @feconix’s opinion about movies.
That’s when Twitter starts being powerful. Most people don’t realize that Twitter is all about conversations. It’s about having a limit to how much you can say, and creatively formatting responses, statements, and questions. You get your own feed to start and when you don’t follow anybody, you only see your own tweets. If you start following people, you get a list of status updates from those people (think Facebook’s status updates). People start following you and seeing you on their feeds. Conversation starts when people reply to you by using @username, and everyone joins in on the communication. Best part is that it’s asynchronous, so you don’t have to be sitting in front of it like a live chat. You can always view your replies and see what people have been saying to you, even if it’s been weeks since you’ve logged in. Think of them as trackbacks.
So, to answer Ryan’s question – you don’t actually have a blog for this. A blog (in it’s macro form) serves a very different purpose. Granted, you do have conversations that take place in response to your blog posts – but it’s not the same conversational feel. Twitter is a means for quick questions and chatter that you don’t see on typical blogs. You don’t experience that until you are following people who actually tweet though.
There are dozens of reasons why Twitter is a great means for communication within the game industry. First of all, developers can engage in chat with their users to get feedback. Users like to follow game companies to get quick tidbits of news in a managable and ‘replyable’ format. Devs chatting with devs is also a very useful mechanism for soliciting feedback and asking advice. Twitter is also a great way to network and meet people. It’s a nice way to reach out to your users and make each one feel listened to and important. Twitter can be as personal or as hands-off as you want it to be. You can even feed your blog RSS in (using a service like TwitterFeed) to simply blast out a message to all your followers when you’ve updated your blog. It’s also a great way to see who is talking about your product. Doing a Twitter search for your game, company, or product name is a valuable way to see conversations pertaining to something relevant to you. And you don’t have to be a follower of someone to reply to them. I often send a @username “Welcome to Metaplace!’ when I see someone chatting about their new access to the Metaplace beta. I’ve offered support to users and directed them where they need to go for help. I’ve done some minor PR and marketing.
Really, if you’re ignoring Twitter – you are probably doing yourself or your company a disservice (unless of course you have a marketing team who pays attention to the Twitter buzz, but even then – it pays to know what users are saying). There have been billions of tweets from users thusfar, and they’re probably talking about you.
Twitter isn’t an alternative to blogging, it’s a meaningful addition. It’s another way to connect with your readers, to garner inspiration for blog posts, to enhance the mini-community you have created through blogging. And, it does indeed take some time to “get it” but once you do, watch out for addiction. I expect we’ll be seeing elements of Twitter moving their way over to mainstream blogging soon, and this article agrees.
Follow me on Twitter if you sign up, and for those who want a nice standalone client for their desktop – try either TweetDeck or Twhirl – both of which are cross platform Adobe Air apps.
