When you think of Twitter the first thought that pops into your mind is most likely not community destination but Chad Engle is challenging that concept.  Chad’s created Design Community Twitter Hours a Thursday night - 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm EST - online group that connects via Twitter at @DCTH to discuss graphic design.

I interviewed Chad recently to get his take on Twitter and community.

Audience Machine:  Let’s start from the beginning.  What was your inspiration for creating DCTH - Design Community Twitter Hours?

DCTH:  Sounds good. The inspiration came from a conversation one night with Adelle and Graham about the design community. We had a conversation in a forum type chat room and it was impossible to keep up and it seemed tons of people had questions about everything design related. So I decided that we as a design community needed a forum to talk to each other.

Audience Machine: When did you activate your the DCTH — http://twitter.com/DCTH  — account on Twitter?  And, and many Followers do you have?  What do you know about your Followers?  Who are they?

DCTH:  Believe it or not I did not even think about making a twitter account for DCTH. I ran it from my personal twitter account ( @chadengle ) the first few weeks and then Niki Brown was a co-host of #DCTH for a few weeks (and will be again provided she will help ) mentioned that I should have an account for it so I made one. At first I just let people follow it who were designers/creatives. Then I realized thats not really how I wanted to build my network, I wanted to make go after as many designers and creatives as possible. So I have started to follow them all because I want to build the DCTH community as big as we can make it. Its been great to hear all of the success stories and have the community support that has come from this. (more…)

Before answering the question “Is Twitter a Terrible Waste of Time?” posed by Justin Kirby of Debatable, I think we first need to ask the question: why do you use email? It most likely has something to do with communication. I use email to connect with people and businesses I know. I Tweet for an entirely different reason. I use Twitter as a distribution tool.

Twitter for me is the equivalent of using email to mass mail all of your contacts. I believe individuals and corporations use Twitter as a communication tool that facilitates mass content distribution. Twitter is just a single corn chip penetrating the proverbial seven-layer dip we all enjoy at Super Bowl parties.

In fact, I would ague online marketing has become the process of developing distribution layers to reach niche networks online. These distribution layers rely mainly on social networking applications. And, presto we have the birth of a new industry buzz term Social Application Marketing or SAM. I’m working on a feature piece for iMedia that I’ll share soon.

I view Twitter as simply one distribution layer in a larger system of distribution that individuals and corporations create to engage audiences. And, the key to success with engaging large audiences is to identify, claim, activate, and communicate using multiple tools. The mistake I see most enterprises making is relying on a single destination profile page or application tool that is used to push up a piece of content. Many firms simply miss the next step of socializing the published content into other networks and tailoring the piece they have published.

So, is Twitter a terrible waste of time? The question almost hints at some mystical secret but the answer is always right in front of us. Interact and you’ll find out for yourself and or for your business.

TAGS: twitter, email, social networking, Facebook, Justin Kirby, Debatable, seven layer dip, audience machine, todd tweedy

PHOTO CREDITS: 1. Rumer Tweet, 2. Demi Tweet, 3. Twitter is over capacity. to many tweets, 4. installed tweetdeck