Twitter's Gone Wild

Twitter use has exploded during the past few months.  If you are a news source, it is a great way to spread information quickly, or if you are an end user it's an easy way to find out about the latest breaking stories.  Most hockey news headlines now seem to be on Twitter before they even hit the newswire these days.  But is this a good thing or bad thing?

I must admit, I'm a bit "old school" and I did not like Twitter at first.  Cory created an account for Canes Country about a year ago and several months passed by before we even used it.  But the think-tanks who run SB Nation developed a very cool integration feature which allows our writers to update Twitter whenever we post a blog article or fanpost.  So we started using Twitter whenever we updated the blog and it seems to have worked very well, much like an RSS feed for notification purposes.

But there are several other uses for Twitter.  Some beat writers are starting to send information that way.  Some fans are giving their perspective of the goings on at practices.  Some folk actually have full blown discussions in Twitter.  But when does it become too much?

We could do more with Twitter here at Canes Country, but I'm not sure exactly where to go with it.  Do you want opinions on breaking news during the day?  Do you want updates at practices or at games?  At what point does it become redundant or too offbeat to be meaningful?  At what point does it become annoying?

Are there uses for Twitter that we should be doing, but are not?  One of the major purposes of the blog is to serve you, our loyal readers.  So your opinions are important.   If you want more we will give you more.  But what information do you want?

I'm sure opinions will be all over the map about this, but it will be interesting to see what the majority says.  I am creating a poll for simplistic voting, but please feel free to leave more detailed comments as well. 

One thing I will promise you.  The information we leave on Twitter will not replace what we do on the blog.  I prefer to write (hopefully) substantive, free flowing stories with no limits on the number of words.  One of the things in general that scares me about Twitter is that I think some people are replacing good, interesting writing in blogs, with simplistic blurbs in a Tweet.  It's easier, faster, and perhaps delivers the same information.  But it's certainly not as enjoyable for me to read.

This was mentioned in one of the comment sections earlier,  we now have a "Carolina Tweets" page where you can follow some of the major Hurricanes related Twitter accounts, all at one location.   It's a bit buggy, but it's better than having your phone buzz all day long. 

We will take a "closer look" at Tom Kostopoulos later this afternoon.