To twitte or not to twitte

Illustration Mike Luckovich

I had an interesting conversation the other day with my friend (and photography mentor) Clif about how to increase traffic on one’s website. Clif has a long experience as a photographer, beautiful images but some how his website does not get much attention.  He is designing a new site in an effort to attract more viewers and among some of the advices given to him by website gurus is that of  subscribing  to “twitter.” I have recently blogged about twistter (in my other blog for those of you who read French, http://bubbly2.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/la-vie-en-140-characteres/), sharing my skepticism about the benefits of this type of social network. A little bit of research showed me that I was wrong and that Twitter is increasingly gaining momentum, emerging as one of themost used  medium to share information and expand networking.

For Mark Hewatt, who is helping my friend Clif with his photographic site, “twitter is just anothe form of direct marketing. It helps to build up followers; …every time you update your status, your network will get a new message.” Hewatt promotes his Flickr site from Twitter and on average he gets 10-15 hits on a promotion of an image.

I found other interesting comments on Twitter on Mediashift,  a PBS site on the digital media revolution, on how everybody becomes obsessed with Twitter and social networking in the media world. Journalists and photographers have different social needs, obviously, but eventually everybody is craving for attention.  To me, though, the caveat is an inevitable dilution of the quality of information, of connection in favor of the quantity. A trade-off, in other words. Nothing new in this old world.

PS: Thanks to Switchie for sending me this cute twitters…