Just a thought – maybe things are different in the US and Canada. We can barely get lawyers to blog in the UK – so I really don’t see them Twittering.

Being honest – I am finding it increasingly difficult to actually use Twitter – (a) It is slow, (b) It is often offline, albeit only for minutes (c) It is fairly lumpy in use on a Mac (maybe different for PC) and (d) I am not sure I need to know all that I read on Twitter.

Not being negative, overly,…. after all I can simply block those I do not wish to read.

Information is crucial to a lawyer – I would, for my part, far prefer to read a detailed analysis in a blog than a short pithy comment on Twitter – and I certainly don’t need Twitter to keep me abreast of what is happening on blogs – I have several hundred blogs bookmarked on a private Pageflakes page – and I have made the collection of UK Blogs available on my online magazine for all to use should they wish to.

Also – there is a ridiculous number of spammers on twitter – I am getting a lot of emails saying ‘X’ is following me. I am now reluctrant to actually read any of these emails because it takes time to discover that “Pammie-Jo is following 400,000 people, has no followers and only one update.’…. so… for the moment, the serious people aren’t getting clicked on by me, simply because I don’t have the time.

The Spam issue is a very serious issue for Twitter. I cannot believe US or Canadian lawyers are tolerant about wasting billable time clicking on a follower email only to discover that it is a spammer?

Perhaps I am doing something wrong or missing the point – it is not unknown for both these phenomena to be part of my life
But… that said – it is free and I get some pleasure from abusing Twitter….. but, then again, I don’t exactly toe any party lines… nor do I care to or plan to :-)

One interesting comparison though… how many legal bloggers are producing content on a daily basis? I have the Justia firehose of all blog updates running into my RSS reader. I never have the time to read them, but I do have a sense that about 200-400 posts a day are being produced.

So I’m thinking, perhaps 2-300 twitter users isn’t all that bad, and the threshold to participation is a lot lower than blogging(?). Also, blogs & twitter go really well together. It’s very cool to hit the publish button on your blog post, and then run over to twitter to see the questions and kudos. Same kind of instant gratification we used to get when other bloggers picked up our posts and relayed to their readers.

And in terms of adoption, when CNN is pulling quotes out of twitter and relaying them to prime time news? I would expect that adoption rate to increase. Lawyers included.

Simon, I would argue that lawyers are only just starting to discover Twitter so, even though it has been around for a couple years at least, the lawyer adoption rate is just starting to pick up. I think we are seeing some good momentum from various articles (such as those Steve has put together) and the JD Supra list.

Last week when I was teaching a course on social networking to contact professionals (call centre managers) most of whom were not on Facebook, most had heard of Twitter. I think it is just starting to hit the mainstream and the real impact has yet to be felt.

Oh no – the *final* definitive argument to get a Blackberry! I can twitter from anywhere, anytime!

Congrats on the #2 spot next to Steve, who bears special mention for moving to the head of the pack!

I wonder if this should be called social networking or rather, social experimenting. I think we are all trying to determine the impact of Twitter and other such tools from the inside out…I would love to see a study that tracks some metrics regarding the tie-in between the business case and Twitter. Perhaps it all depends on how you define your goals, as per Steven Covey…

Cheers,

Dave Bilinsky
http://www.thoughtfullaw.com