By Ken Siegal

Seems like the surveys keep rolling out proclaiming Gen Y the sole owners of Facebook and Baby Boomers (or at least early Gen Xers) the Twitterers. Carol Phillips, a marketing prof at Notre Dame, joined the conversation when she listed "Three Reasons Gen Y Doesn't Get Twitter"

The reasons? Twitter is unnecessary, they say -- FB, text messaging fill all the gaps, plus FB enables messaging updates, calendars, contact books, videos, photos, etc., all in one place. What's the point of Twitter, Phillips quotes.

I certainly can't speak for Gen Y, but I can speak to what's the point. Twitter works for some of us on a whole variety of other levels, not really approached by FB. Anybody ever watch TV and see a stream of headlines and updates crawl across the bottom of the screen? Anybody ever listen to news being broadcast live from an event. For that matter, anybody ever see a quick reference to an interesting or funny story/blog/article/news update? I have, and always appreciated them. And now I see all of those every day on Twitter.

And that's not even counting the number of new "friends" I've made on this marvelous new network. Yes, most of them are professional contacts, rather then buddies, but a network is priceless (as people in the careers business always say).

If I were to give advice (which I hate to do) to anybody wondering "What's The Point", I'd say try this: Start keeping a Twitter track of things you do that are interesting, funny, sad, serious. Not just "I hate getting up for work in the morning". Things that you do and see and think about are what make you unique.

Then go to Twitter and start following a lot of diverse people. Not just college friends and not just Ashton or Oprah (who will never follow you back), but different people. Do a search on a topic, and then follow some of the people who have commented on a topic. Then do the same thing for a different topic, and then another. Build your custom network, and keep pushing out your own Tweets all the while.

So do I really care if you use Twitter versus Facebook? No, not really. Is it an age thing? No, not really. What I do care about is that you find more ways to stretch your network, and help you become a more diverse person, and eventually, be more prepared to have a successful career.

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