About a year ago, I got pretty involved in Twitter. I was meeting some really great people, networking and connecting. It was fun, and I was even getting leads from it. There was always some new course being offered, and new “twitter celebrities” were popping up all the time.

The active people on Twitter were also very good at policing things….too many marketing messages were frowned upon, and for the most part, things worked pretty well. There was a communication frenzy going on that was almost intoxicating.

Then, about 6 months ago, the bottom fell out. The cat was out of the bag. Many pseudo-marketers looked at it as a forum for blasting their messages. People got onto Twitter in droves, and just started spamming the entire community. Twitter did ban a lot of offenders, but they simply could not keep up with the people who insisted on littering the community with blatant marketing messages.

Back in the “good old days,” I had about 3,500 followers. If I put out an article, or a thought-provoking post, I could get about 40-50 eyeballs on it in a 24 hour period. Now I have 23,000 followers, and I am a better marketer. I am putting out better quality material. And now, I am lucky if I get 1-2 looking at my posts.

For most of the people who’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ve noticed (or have you?) that I don’t spend as much time on Twitter anymore. I find it much more difficult to make real connections, as there is so much litter to wade through. So, I now do most of my networking on Facebook.

I recently UNfriended (yes, UN) about 4,000 people on Facebook, just to get back to a manageable number of people that I was really connecting with. It has proven to be a really good move for me. I am now really connecting with the people that I really want to get to know. Isn’t that what Social Media is all about?

So, is Twitter dead? You tell me.

Shecky