It’s been interesting to see how twitter has evolved the past couple of years. There seems to be no single way of using it usefully; like blogs, different people/companies use it differently. Here are some use-cases I’ve been observing:

- vanity feed: telling the world about me, me, me – “I like spaghetti”, “I think blue is better than purple”, blah blah..
- marketing: my company just did this, my company just did that, special promotion on today
- short-form communication: “good to see you at the conference, @whoeveryousaw”, “@same, yeah, you too; see you next year”
- voyeurism: just reading what people we’re interested in are writing (celebrities, respected people in our field)
- trends: who’s talking about specific things (#amazonfail, #budgetbond) – and how do people feel about those things.
- sharing links: this is replacing the old way of doing things, which was to email a friend something you thought was interesting. Now you just have to publish a link you find interesting and all your followers will have the chance to see it.

So I’ve decided to jump back in and give it another shot. What’s my use case? It will have to come naturally, but I suspect what I will enjoy doing most is sharing links I thought were interesting, and leaving comments on brands I want to draw attention to for positive or negative feedback. We’ll see how it goes.

If you’re interested in following, my username on twitter is also yannick.