Why I Can Never Leave Twitter

There are many posts going around about Twitter today. All of them are great reads that I recommend. In one post, Steven Hodson of Winextra and Mashable (congrats Steven!) pointed out how similar Twitter can be to Windows and how we just don’t want to live without either one. He’s absolutely right. However, just like users are switching to Macs, there’s plenty of alternatives to Twitter. Some people are already heading to Plurk. There are some complications to discuss first. Quitting Twitter is about as hard as quitting smoking for a variety of reasons. Here are mine.

Community & Brand

With nearly 900 followers now, I don’t seeing that same community number somewhere else. Not that I don’t have faith in myself. It’s just that I’ve already established myself on Twitter and that took months and a ton of work. I’m recommended by my followers and I’m continuously interacting and building on these connections. I’d hate to severe those connections and no matter how I try to do it, it would be a very abrupt severance.

In turn, this could actually do some damage to my brand. There is no alternative with the same community activity as Twitter to help recover from any of that damage either. I could lose potentially valuable connections switching to another service. I could also put a strain on some of the connections I’ve already made. There are quite a few people that I only talk to on Twitter. I don’t have the time to email them and see what’s going on and they most likely won’t have much time to respond. It wouldn’t be the same anyway.

The way that Twitter helps you to establish and grow your brand and your own community is absolutely amazing. These are the biggest reasons some people are even on Twitter. No other service compares and I really don’t see anyone who isn’t of the elite establishing the same numbers, brand growth, and value somewhere else.

Time and Energy

I don’t know how long I’ve been on Twitter. It’s been a while though and I’ve put a lot of time and energy into everything I’ve done on Twitter. I worked hard at tweeting and I feel I’ve damn near mastered Twitter.

Think of it like this: when you get out of one relationship that you’ve put so much time and effort into, do you really feel like going out there, just to find a replacement to try to rebuild what you had with someone else?

No, you don’t. In your mind, you know you can’t either. It would be too tiresome. It would seem so tedious. It’s such a long and rigorous process that we don’t even realize how hard it is until all of it is about to go out the window. I personally don’t want to go through it again just to replace Twitter. I want to do it because I want to do it. When it’s forced and you’re really not ready, you won’t get much out of it. Plus, you’ll be tempted to give up for no good reason.

It’s About the Community

It’s amazing to me how so much is dependent upon the Twitter community. Can you see the power that this community has? It’s the same with Windows to be honest. It’s still in demand because of the community. No matter how much we hate the Twitter system, we love the Twitter community. That’s what makes us put up with Twitter’s bullshit. We know just how hard it would be to find what we’ve found on Twitter. We’ve been looking for it for so long and whether or not it was there before, the community was never there the way it is today on Twitter.

This is why I can’t leave Twitter…not now anyway and hopefully not ever.