New media consulant Marshall Kirkpatrick loves Twitter.
People laugh at Twitter, and they can go ahead and laugh for all I care, but I’m here to tell you that it can be invaluable. Aside from the personal connectedness and relationship maintenance it’s good for, let’s be honest – it’s paying my rent.
How is it paying my rent though? Earlier this week I was remarking (on Twitter) about how many of my recent story leads came from Twitter. I counted and at that time 5 of my last 11 stories were based on news I learned first from my friends on Twitter. It was amazing.
Kirkpatrick goes to say many of his blog posts (which originated as germs of a story on Twitter), found their way to the front page of Digg. Digg brings traffic back to one’s site and that traffic is then monetized via ad revenue. Hence. the claim “Twitter is paying my rent.”
I saw this too. Was surprised he couldn’t see that his situation was quite unique: not everyone makes a living as a blogger.
SOP for 2.0 cheerleaders though– there’s just black and white. No gray.
Thanks for the coverage. Fwiw, I’m of the opinion that people in many, many occupations (even the few folks out there in the world who aren’t professional bloggers!?) can leverage early access to info for first-mover’s advantage. Even natural disasters have been reported first on twitter so I’m sure that with enough of the right friends you could find something more than worth your time.