The Twitter Experiment, Part 2: My Experience with Twitter so Far.

What I expected: People tweeting every single moment of their day. "Just got out of bed." "Just ate breakfast." "Getting in the shower." "Showering ;)"

What I Seem to Have Gotten: "Buy my book!" "[TITLE] is free on Amazon Today!" "[Preview of Book]. [Only $x.xx on Amazon] [Link]."

I suppose that's what happens when you just start following indie authors.

What I Like: I've been "tweeting" for a week, and already, I have 72 followers. Considering it's taken me nearly two months to get 8 followers here on this blog, I would say it's not a bad deal, especially with the possibility of people seeing my stuff and thinking, "Hey, I'll totally Retweet that." Is it going to happen often? Probably not; I'm not really all that interesting. And with so many others clogging up feeds with "Buy my book!", what chance is there that my little Family History is going to be mentioned? It's highly unlikely.

What I dislike: Again, the fact that so many authors use it for only advertising, and only advertising. I've already unfollowed one or two people who only posted advertisements, and posted them all. the. time. I've got enough of that without seeing your picture every other tweet.

Also, some of the "Worldwide Trends" that pop up in my side bar seem so inane and stupid. I don't care about Britney Spears being president, or whatever. So far, my favorite has been "Replace Band Names with Doofs."

What I would like to see more of: So far, this entire endeavor feels very impersonal. When I see a tweet about something other than "Buy my book!", I'll often try and respond, just to try and open up a conversation with somebody, though I've had very little of the same. In fact, most of my "personal messages" are from people I've newly followed telling me to "Check Out [X]." Today I had a "personal message" from somebody saying "We make book trailers for $150!" Most of the book trailers I've seen have been nothing more than something of a powerpoint-type show with pictures, music, and words, and I've never really heard of them helping generate any type of sales. If I have $150, I'm probably going to spend that on advertising my book somewhere. But that's another post for another day.

So far, I can't say I'm disappointed with Twitter. Again, I was pretty anti-Twitter ever since I heard of the website, and still am, to some extent. I suppose this was more or less of an experiment, since I kept hearing that it was an excellent social networking tool for reaching out to readers and other writers. And it is, really. Like I said; I've gotten 72 followers in a week without doing anything other than following others. However, I was hoping to use this as a tool to "connect" with others; thus far, I feel like I've entered myself into a not-so-successful advertising campaign.

In other news: there's this awesome new site that's been created by a Redditor, Reddit Authors. The point is to show off Redditor-produced content. The site is new, though it looks sleek and professional already. And, from what I can tell, the creator seems like a pretty nice guy. Also, I'm on there (but, for whatever reason, Family History: Part 1 is not, though Part 2 is. Weird.) and I didn't even have to request it. Seriously - if you're a Redditor, I suggest at least stopping by and taking a short look around, and not just because I was somehow automatically thrown into some "Yay! You're Affiliated!" category.