More to Twitter than begging SRK to talk

If it weren't for semi-literate actors and starlets desperate for attention, Twitter wouldn't hog the kind of press it currently does in India. And that's the truth. The good thing about this state of affairs is that it has forced a lot more people to log on -- even if compelled to do so by curiosity alone. The sad thing is a large number of users simply fail to use it well.

A large percentage of tweets veer from the shockingly banal ('have a good day, tweeps') to the completely delusional ('SRK, why won't you talk to me?'). A large number of businesses fail to use it to their advantage too, either as a powerful source of relevant data or as a means to connect with customers better than ever before.

And so, buried beneath the ReTweets -- for that, in effect, is what newspapers and news channels are often reduced to doing, at least as far as reporting on the lives of our celebs goes -- is the fact that tweeting can take you places.

As a career prospect, the opening up to Twitter by LinkedIn may force a lot more executives to look at this micro-blogging platform in a new light; a self-serving one, at that. LinkedIn now enables users to follow contacts that have Twitter profiles. By doing so, they separate some wheat from a lot of chaff, allowing for the possibility of a more rewarding professional dialogue. Users can also moderate which tweets to post to LinkedIn, or create private lists of connections that are updated dynamically.

What this does is, in effect, let users play the role of mentor or engage with folk they think they can learn something from. Adding immense value to their own profile pages, they can -- with a bit of tweaking -- help potential employers gauge their interests or aptitude for a particular role far more effectively than a bland CV does.

Freshers can now interact with CEOs. Have a conversation with your parents to figure out how impressive that possibility really is. And remember: There's a lot more to Twitter than Shashi Tharoor.

-- Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD Day Online
twitter.com/lindsay pereira