@rogiernoort I think it depends on what you are tweeting. If your tweets are business orientated, like giving industry tips or product news, then a twitter stream would be useful.

I’m personally not a big fan of the widget that twitter provides you so I would suggest finding an alternative that you can style yourself.

Load times are becoming less important on the web as the internet gets quicker – now before everyone starts yelling at me – Google does penalise websites that load slowly, however in the case of using a twitter widget amongst other social media widgets, it’s unlikely to push your website over that threshold.

You also should consider whether your users are already on twitter, if they are, you probably don’t need a feed (but should have a good call to action to follow you on twitter). If they aren’t, its a great way to show latest information on your website without them having a twitter account.

Hope that helps – Sam

@samscholfield Thanks. Point is.., followers of sowandso.com are quite active on Twitter. They’re gardeners and small holders and do Tweet a lot about the weather.
We have two authors and I like to give them both equal “floortime”.

@kristi-hines “7 Reasons Having a Twitter Feed in Your Sidebar is a Really Dumb Idea”. Well.., that covers it I guess. That is a good post with even better comments, a very useful thread.

All in all.., when the blog grows and we revamp it.., it is worth a good discussion how to make proper use of the sidebar.
For now.., I’ll leave the Twitter stream where it is.., the girls like it and it is their platform after all…

Thanks for the replies…

I don’t bother with the twitter stream on sidebar. It serves no purpose for me or the visitors to my site.
From my pillar content, I tend to tweet from within the post to build up brand presence on twitter though.

My business site is programmed so that only my latest tweet appears as a live feed on my Home page. That keeps tweets to a minimum but lets people know I have an active presence on Twitter. Having said that, I don’t “do” Twitter as well as I should — I mostly tweet links to other people’s articles I read as part of my daily learning time (use Buffer app to do this), and links to articles from my own blog.

One of our clients asked us to add a Twitter feed to the “What’s New” page on her new business website. They are a traveling winery (in a retro Airstream trailer, noless!), and a lot of the festivals they attend have a lot of tweeters in attendance. Since they don’t have a blog, they opted to use their Twitter feed as a live, mini blog. They’re just learning how to use Twitter, but the feed seems to be working well for their type of business.

I think it all depends on what you hope to accomplish with your Twitter feed, and how it might enhance your site. I’d say, “If in doubt, leave it out.”