Twitter Quitter

I quit Twitter today. Oh, this isn’t going to be some minimalist manifesto, just a statement of fact.

I deleted my posts, all 1500+ of them, shared over the past two years or so. Some were moving, insightful. Most were fun. None were ever drivel. No one ever knew what I had for breakfast, I never foursquare’d myself into a virtual mayoral coup d’tat, no one knew when I was ill, and only occasionally did I mention the weather. I even gained a friend or two.

I just got tired.

I initially joined Twitter and other social media to remain up to date on the social media communities important to my clients. I even joined MySpace back in the day – closed the account when it became irrelevant to me.

I like to write, and Twitter and Facebook are good virtual water coolers for office at home types like myself. But they are an extension of me, that is, my personal brand, and before every tweet I’d have to consider that. That can be tiring, particularly for someone such as myself, given to dark humor and sarcasm – 140 characters is plenty of room for a zinger, but never enough for context.

So I’m not dropping out in some Luddite fantasy, I’m just lightening my load a bit. I can be distracted and Twitter is nothing if not a distraction. It was one more thing that took my time from things that were clearly more constructive, useful, profitable, enjoyable, important. Like all good business decisions when faced with limited resources (in this case, time) I had to determine if it was core to my business or life, and if I could justify the continued investment in it. The answer was clearly, no. It was not core, and there are other, arguably better ways to market myself and my ideas, and interact with others.

So my Twitter account is inactive. Of course, I’ll stay in touch, though my number of followers will undoubtedly fall sharply in the coming weeks (another invented preoccupation I'll not miss). I’ll follow the Twittersphere for news on how to leverage Twitter in marketing, and from time to time check on tweets from those I follow who continue to leverage Twitter expertly. The end of this relationship is amicable. I can tell you about Twitter. I can help you create a presence on Twitter. I can now see commercial purposes for Twitter I couldn’t see just a few months ago.

But for now, I’ll just be observing.