Yesterday a professional companion Adam Bullied wrote in his blog, Write That Down, about a Twitter chat in which he participated. While he enjoyed the experience with colleagues who have “forgotten much more than he will ever know”, his conclusion was that he “couldn’t get in to the depth required for a topic an include examples – all within 140 characters.”
No offense to Adam, but wrong, wrong, wrong! I have had the same opportunities on Twitter now for several months. And, also participate in a weekly Twitter chat. Once a week, at 3 pm pacific time, the Twitter group #aopm discusses the “cultural anthropology of product management.” There are four or five regulars who join, and another 5 or 6 who come in an out. And, unlike Adam’s feelings, I could not engage more or better with this group.
So, what’s different? Well, first, I love the fact that I have to “tighten” my discussion points and counterpoints to the 140 character limit. It makes me much more concise in my thoughts. Second, I love engaging with this group of incredibly intelligent product management professionals. Like Adam, the people I am conversing with have more knowledge than I hope to have, and it is a mental sprint for me to keep up and try to add value.
I think what it really comes down to though, is what are you trying to get out of the experience? This is like every product as well. If you believe the product is the next best thing since sliced bread, then you invest more in it to learn how to get more out of it. If you don’t, it accumulates dust on a shelf.
I have found that my experience with Twitter was like every other new technology. I sat on the sidelines for awhile watching and learning, waded into the shallow end, and once I had some confidence in my swimming, went out to where the cool kids were swimming.
From the outside looking in, I think it comes down to one difference and only one – I have a purpose and strategy for how I use Twitter. Without this focus, I don’t know if I would get as much out of it. I am currently using Twitter to 1) keep my PM/PMM skills sharp and engaged while looking for a new opportunity; 2) expand my network for said opportunity; 3) grow myself and my network for the other side of landing the opportunity.
I have had no trouble keeping it to 140 characters. Can you?
Sorry – must not have been clear in what I was trying to say.
I didn’t have trouble engaging in the conversation over Twitter. But sometimes, when discussing complex and/or detailed topics, you can’t write even 1 paragraph long examples to help make a point.
That doesn’t means it’s not useful or interesting. Everyone still writes examples when trying to explain something, right? Maybe it’s just me.
But if I’m talking about strategy alignment and I want to provide an example – as we were during the chat, it’s impossible to do in some cases. Not all cases – just some.
That’s all I was trying to point out.