Isn't TweetLater missing the point of Twitter?

I have to admit that I don't quite get TweetLater:

"Now YOU Can Schedule Future Tweets For All Your Twitter Accounts"

And this:

"Stuck on an aircraft? Back to back meetings? Taking vacation? Running errands? Playing with the kids?

Have peace of mind and more free time. Keep your Twitter feed ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer."

Now, don't get me wrong... I fully understand and appreciate the value in scheduling blog posts. Some time back when I was more interested in growing my readership, I did exactly that. I would write up a series of posts and have them set to publish on certain days at certain times. Do a flurry of writing and then let the posts just stream out there over the next days or weeks. Every now and then I consider doing that again. It makes sense to me if you are trying to maintain/grow readership and want to maintain consistency in posting.

But those are blog posts... usually larger blocks of text. And usually pieces that I really need to write on my laptop or other computer. They are took long to really type on a Blackberry or other portable device. (or at least longer than *I* want to type on a Blackberry!)

Do we really need this for Twitter?

Isn't the point of Twitter really to talk about what you are doing now... or what has your attention now? Isn't it really a tool for your life stream? Or for pointing to your blog posts? Or querying your network of people? Or hanging out at the virtual water cooler?

Now maybe those are just ways that I use it and maybe others have other uses where TweetLater might be useful. But given that you only type 140 characters or less and that you can do this from a zillion different interfaces (cell phones via SMS, cell phones via web, Internet cafes, any web access, other sites, etc.), it seems to me that it is easy enough to update Twitter from most places.

More to the point, if you are stuck on an aircraft or playing with your kids, why should you be twittering? In my book it's perfectly okay to be offline sometimes.

Are we finding people who feel they MUST twitter all the time?

Are there people who feel that they need to twitter on a consistent basis in order to grow/maintain their followers? Will people really have more "peace of mind" if they queue up a bunch of tweets?

Are we just creating another rat race where Twitters feel they have constantly keep producing? (And isn't that just a hamster wheel?)

That's certainly not how I use Twitter, and it seems to me to be the polar opposite of the whole Twitter "What are you doing" mindset... but maybe there are some folks out there of feel "they have to twitter" in order to keep on going. (I would suggest that perhaps such folks need to "chill out", but hey, that's just my view.)

Where I could see it working

Now where I can see something like TweetLater being used is for Twitter accounts tied to an event where you tweet out parts of the schedule. For instance, let's take a tech conference that has keynotes, breakout sessions, breaks, etc. The organizers could publicize that people could stay up-to-date on what is going on at the conference by following the conference twitter ID. The organizers could then use a service like TweetLater to queue up tweets to go out at certain times:

• 8:55 - "Keynote with XXX, CEO of YYY, starting in 5 minutes in Grand Ballroom I"
• 10:30 - "Morning refreshment break in Foyer II sponsored by XXXXX"
• 10:55 - "Concurrent sessions starting: XXXX in Panama 1, YYYY in Panama 2.."
• 11:00 - "Exhibit Hall now open. Visit booth 1234 to win an iPod."

Etc, etc. You get the idea. The conference staff could queue up these scheduled tweets to go out but then also send out unscheduled tweets as the need arose ("Session A in Panama 2 has been cancelled as the speaker's flights were cancelled."). Attendees who followed the conference name could get those updates on whatever device they found useful. All in all I could see that being useful at a conference.

So there I could see it being useful. But for individual twitter users? I don't see it... but maybe I also don't see all of how twitter has evolved.

What do you think? Would you use a service like TweetLater? Do you know of people you think might?

Technorati Tags: twitter, tweetlater, blogging, microblogging

Comments

[Khyle]

By no means am I a Twitter expert. But at the end of the day, it's just a delivery channel to get a message to an audience. People are using it for more than just IM+, it's a business tool.

Like anything, if you see more messages regularly, that user gains more name recognition. I don't want to over-state the importance, but I can see usefulness.

BTW: Shouldn't comment posts start having Twitter IDs as well as URLs?

[Dewald Pretorius]

It's an interesting perspective that you offer. If Twitter is viewed from a purist point of view using "what are you doing right now" as the starting point, then one has to physically update your feed by real-time typing and sending.

However, Twitter has evolved into more than just a vehicle to communicate "what you're doing right now."

I created TweetLater because I recognized a need from both a business and personal perspective.

From a personal perspective, there are some things, which one wants to share with your followers, that aren't time-specific. Take a look at my feed (click on my name above). Every entry that says "via web" came from TweetLater. Every entry that says "via twhirl" was real-time typing. I don't believe the TweetLater tweets stand out as inappropriate and/or redundant.

With TweetLater I can post non-time specific tweets and spread out them out over time so that I don't bombard my followers with bursts of tweets.

Also, if one's purpose is to build a "personal brand" via Twitter, then it's important to maintain mind-share. With TweetLater you can maintain that mind-share when your voice would otherwise have been silent.

Soon, any tweet from TweetLater will be identified with "via TweetLater", which means your followers will know those were scheduled and were not real-time.

If used prudently, I think it will be very useful.

Best regards,

Dewald

[Dan York]

@Khyle: Thanks for the reply. And yes, the point you make is similar to the reason I have scheduled blog posts in the past. Consistent streaming of information on a regular basis is a solid way to build an audience (assuming the content is also good). Maybe it's because I tweet so much already on a daily basis that I come at it from that point-of-view. I do see, though, that if you did want to build an audience - if that were your goal - it could be useful.

Regarding comment posts having Twitter IDs instead of URLs, what you can do (and I've done here) is to simply put your Twitter URL in the URL spot instead of the blog site or corporate site you might normally put there.

[Dan York]

@Dewald: First, let me just congratulate you on creating TweetLater. I applaud anyone who creates a web service and lets people use it (even if I personally may not initially see the value in it). So thanks for putting in the time to do it.

Yes, I absolutely agree that Twitter has evolved beyond the "What are you doing" world. I've written about the evolution a bit in my recent post at: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2008/04/revisiting-the.html

Okay, I can buy the argument that this allows you to spread out non-time-sensitive posts so that you don't bombard your followers. I undoubtedly do that at times. (In fact, I know of an acquaintance who stopped following me because at some point my tweets made up something like 50% of their Twitter stream.) I *can* see the value in that.

I guess my only concern with that is that, as I wrote about in the post I reference above, I *have* come to value Twitter as a "presence" tool to learn where people are (assuming they are frequent twitterers). On one level, this tool would remove that (by showing posts when they aren't really around)... however, since the posts would say "via TweetLater" I could easily know that these are automated posts, which, if I look at the "via" part of the tweet, would address my "presence" concern.

Regarding the "via TweetLater" label, I'm of two minds on that. On the one hand, I personally would *like* posts labelled that way so that I can know which ones of the people I'm following are "real-time" and which ones are "scheduled". However, it strikes me that many potential users of your system would definitely NOT like that identification - they would like their tweets to simply show up as if they were posted by them in real-time. Perhaps it could default to "via TweetLater" but you could have a configuration option to let it appear as "via web"?

And yes, I guess I *can* see the value in the service if your objective is to build your personal brand/audience/followers. If you want more followers, this could ensure that you are more or less constantly pushing out tweets.

Thanks for building the service and for taking the time to reply here.

Dan

[Dewald Pretorius]

Dan,

Thank you for your kind comments.

As far as "via TweetLater" being optional, that's unfortunately not under my control. That text is automatically appended by the Twitter system when a tweet is sent from the TweetLater.com domain. It's going live with the next Twitter system update, which is likely to be within the next 48 hours.

I can see that some folks wouldn't want that text as part of their tweets, but I would caution them to reconsider.

Personally, I'd much rather err on the side of caution out of respect for my followers, with that text being appended to my scheduled posts. That way my followers have full disclosure. They know I'm not online, but they also know that I considered them and wanted to give them some useful information while I was offline.

In addition, being slightly forgetful, I find TweetLater useful to capture a tweet while that particular thought is still in the active parts of my brain. Had I not had that functionality, some (most?) time-insensitive tweets would simply not be sent because I would have lost that train of thought by the time I'd find a moment to Twitter about it. I think I'm trying to say that I created TweetLater out of personal need. :)

Best regards,

Dewald