Many years ago, I wrote an article entitled “What’s Wrong with Twitter?” The article was never published, in large part because I couldn’t come up with a strong thesis. All that I knew for certain was that this particular form of social media wasn’t working for me.

Articles about Twitter focused on the glory of its “conversations,” but I saw a stream of unrelated Tweets from people I was already conversing with via Facebook! What could be more redundant?

These days I love Twitter. So the question I hope to answer is: what changed? And can it make your Twitter experience a better one?

1. I found Tweetdeck.

For someone like me, who requires context to promote understanding, Twitter’s UI was truly terrible. The UI is simple – so simple, that I struggled to connect my followers to any potential interaction. Without seeing an interaction (beyond “retweeting”) I gave up and navigated away to Facebook, Livejournal, or Gmail – places where my responses appeared alonside the items that had triggered them.

Enter Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and other tools have been created just for people like me, who need prompting and context to communicate. Where before I understood only that I might want to retweet, now if people intereact with me, it appears right beside my Timeline. I also find information under hashtags and consider who in my feed might appreciate it.

Tweetdeck helps put context into Twitter.

2. I found resources

Facebook is intended to keep people communicating about their lives. But Twitter revolves around topics. I found it frustrating when my hope was to catch up on a gestalt of my community, but once I began using Tweetdeck, I realized I could identify key topics and hear what a huge community had to say on the subject.

I set up columns on musicians and websites I liked, but by and large I wasn’t interested in hearing about them on a daily basis – most tweets were links to articles that I wasn’t interested in. Then I started a #contentstrategy column – a topic that I actively searched for articles on.

Here’s where Twitter and I came together. Since most people link to articles, I began following topics that I would otherwise be Googling for articles. Twitter was an excellent method of crowdsourcing topic-based information. I now follow hashtags for conferences, meetups, and webinars I attend, subjects I’m researching, and topics I want to stay up to date on.

3. I met people

On Facebook, and on Livejournal before that, I had only sought out people I knew. Obviously, I began Twitter the same way. But after my first conference, I began adding strangers to my feed. I added people who had been retweeting me. I added people who had added me. And I added people who had been tweeting within my columns – people who were tweeting articles that I wanted to read!

Suddenly, instead of looking for people to make plans with in the future, I was using Twitter to find people who were in the same place as me in the moment. During a webinar, I tweeted with new Twitter-followers and we helped one another to understand points the presenter had missed. During a conference session, several of us met by the back door (arranged via Twitter) to continue the conversation over coffee.

Where other social media forms continue real life friendships, I have found that Twitter serves a better purpose cultivating new relationships. If Facebook wants to be email, Twitter wants to be an online chat room. If Facebook wants to feel like high school, then Twitter wants to be summer camp, separate from “real life.”

Twitter is an ugly duckling

Twitter made a terrible duck. I wanted it to work as Facebook, Livejournal, MySpace, Friendster, and so many other ducks had worked. But once I began recognizing that Twitter had not only different features, but different goals, it turned into a beautiful swan.

How did Twitter win your heart? Or is it yet to?