I must admit I was more than a little sceptical about Twitter, I honestly could not see the point in it! However, after spending a couple of weeks both observing and tweeting, I am finally beginning to see its uses. I experimented with hashtags including #farmville, #facebook, and #farm. The 'farm' hashtag brought me lots of farming and agricultural tweets, but nothing about Farmville. The Farmville hashtag was very popular, updating every few seconds it seemed at times.
I decided to tweet about a recent story I had come across while researching, it was about a FarmVille "addict" who had been told to "get off the farm" by Dr Phil. I also tweeted about FarmVille and disaster relief in Haiti and included a link to my blog posting on the same topic. I then decided to post a link to the latest FarmVille podcast on YouTube, and re-tweeted some tweets commenting on FarmVille. As well as tweeting about FarmVille, I also tweeted about some other interesting technology/social networking stories I came across. At this stage none of my tweets or re-tweets have been commented on.
Unfortunately, I didn't find Twitter helpful at all in finding out information for my chosen topic – mainly because the FarrmVille hashtag gets absolutely bombarded by all sorts of viral marketing, for example in just one minute a whole page of tweets with this hashtag appears, but most of the tweets are promoting "FarmVille secrets" an e-book which can be purchased.. Or even worse, there were links to sites about erectile dysfunction, 100 sex secrets and haemorrhoid treatments, again all with the Farmville hashtag!
Although I didn't find Twitter helpful with my topic, I did find it useful for general social media and tech news stories and updates, and I found some good social media commentators to follow. I also realised what a useful tool it is for directing traffic to a website or blog.
Here are my tweets:
#farmville Recognition for Fans & Valentines Themed Farm Competition and More! -- FarmVille Podcast - Feb 12th http://youtu.be/54S77P7HCMY
Search engine, phones, operating system and now Ultra High speed Broadband - what's next for Google? #fdnsql http://bit.ly/ctzGgG 7:55 AM Feb 11th from web
#farmville Harvested your crops, fed your animals but forgot to feed your own family? Maybe Dr Phil can help! http://bit.ly/7bviqK 5:59 PM Feb 10th from web
#farmville FarmVille and Disaster Relief bit.ly/7HpF7N 5:23 PM Feb 10th from web
Get out of Farmville! Start a Garden for real! RT @WonderHowTo Get Out of Farmville! Dr. Phil Treats an Addict http://bit.ly/a985sx 5:01 PM Feb 10th from TweetMeme
Will we be buzzing now instead of tweeting? #fdnqf5 http://smh.com.au/technology/technology-news-nqf5.html 11:27 AM Feb 10th from web
No more junk mail??? iPad could be the nemesis of direct mail | The Australian: http://bit.ly/d5OID5 via @addthis 11:59 AM Feb 1st from web
Facebook friends can be real after all! #fdmwet http://smh.com.au/technology/technology-news-mwet.html 9:14 AM Jan 27th from web
Trying to get my head around Twitter...still don't see the point of it! 12:49 AM Jan 26th from web
And the re-tweets:
JoshuaBrown18 What a buggy POS that #farmville is. Seriously, why would anyone put that out. The mrs was trying it with the kids. I tried to help. Mistake. about 4 hours ago from web Retweeted by you
Sunilgarg RT @justinesherry RT @pyro: It's interesting to note that Farmville has more active players than the entire population of France. 11:37 AM Feb 10th from Twitterrific Retweeted by you and 1 other
Farmvilletweet Learn how to optimize your FarmVille farm layout to guarantee fast harvesting and eliminating withering of your crops. http://bit.ly/7pzzKH 1:08 AM Jan 31st from API Retweeted by you
