Twitter may be a great tool, but practically speaking, I have a few personal issues with the service that I feel I need to vent about. What better place to do it than on the digital signage blog for everyone to see. I thought that by using the service some of my concerns would have subsided, but I've found the more I use it, the more these issues bother me. However, I must say Twitter, when used effectively, can be a great method for driving Internet traffic. Here at Digital Signage dot com, we still receive between 25 and 80 daily hits from Twitter. Numbers that you can't shake a stick at. For that, at least, credit must be given where credit is due.

Some Beefs I have with Twitter:

• It reminds me of AOL instant messenger from my junior high days. I'm not that old and when I was in middle school, it seemed the cool thing was to get on AOL every evening and IM with all your school friends over your latest secret crush and basically waste time shooting the breeze about nothing. Small talk isn't always bad, but when you're always limited to 140 characters, the conversation stagnates into a perpetual "small talk" holding pattern of sorts.
• There are no "real" attributable links. The entire Twitter system is a self-contained link farm wherein the only real beneficiaries are Twitter and those who write widgets and apps for Twitter. All of the outbound links are "nofollow" making it like a Wikipedia for social networking. Consequently, Twitter passes no ranking onto sites using the service. Traffic: yes. Ranking: no.
• A lot of hype with no profit. Twitter has certainly built a high ranking fluff website that still has not figured out how to turn a profit. Despite all this they are still receiving plenty of venture funding to continue the venture on. Of course, critical mass is a factor in gaining revenue later on, but I would much rather infuse cash into something that had a decent P/E ratio now, especially given our current economic climate. And, if Twitter ever starts doing advertisements, like some Twitter spam artists, I'll check out.
• Twitter equals sales. Unless you think you can reach the masses of Twitter itself, I doubt you have seen a large increase in sales from Tweets--especially in a B2B environment. Salesmen equal sales. Traffic driving  via Twitter and other SEO methodologies simply do not pack the punch of even the dumbest monkey-of-a-salesperson--especially for big ticket items. Now, gleaning leads via Twitter is another issue entirely--that's something that you can sink your teeth into.
• Twitter can rot your brain. Twitter can be a great way to waste your time seeing what pointless conversations are being played out on the Twittersphere. Facebook sometimes has the same effectiveness as a tool for wasting time. In fact, I recently read an article on Slashdot wherein they claimed Facebook users generally have a lower GPA. I wonder if the same could be said of regular Twitterers.

So as not to rag on the service any longer, I will give it the traffic driving award. Optimized for traffic, Twitter can help your organization to connect with people in all walks of life, including those who may be looking for your product/service. However, it will never be a closing mechanism for making digital signage sales leads fall for you like a dead fish. Only John Doe salesman can do that.

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