FeedsTwitter: wtf?
I'm continually surprised by how many people get a blank look when I start talking about Twitter, so before I begin talking about it, here's an explanation:
Twitter is an online service which you update continuously with max-140-character messages. For instance, "Currently at the bar with James" or "argh why does the server keep crashing." It's microblogging your dull, boring-ass existence in the continual hope that somebody, somewhere, is interested. Starting in about June of 2007 it exploded in popularity for some reason. It even has clones, the most popular of which is probably Jaiku, which Google bought recently. Most people are still trying to figure out what the damn point of the thing is.
The idea of being constantly updated on what all your friends across the globe are having for dinner, or what coffee shop they're at, or how hungover they are this morning (SO hungover) doesn't really have much appeal to me and I feel pretty confident in suggesting that, perhaps, you might feel the same way. Yet, I must admit that there are aspects of it which are intriguing to me. Open invitations are always nice to receive ("Going to the bar," "going on a bike ride," etc.) and this seems like a service that is very uniquely suited to such things. After all, who has the patience of sending a mass text message or email or even IM? This is something that twitter/jaiku could work well for. Random updates about a person's life would also be acceptable. The problem is that the typical twitter stream is a flood of inane details. While this probably works great for people who want to feel more connected to you, the novelty very quickly wears off. This gimmick seems very well suited to a political campaign, and indeed, Barack Obama and John Edwards both have twitter streams. Likewise, certain bloggers have them, which is probably the only reason I care about twitter at all - it's fascinating to see small snippets of a person's life, once or twice. But these are total strangers, celebrities or psuedo-celebrities that we're talking about. No offense to any of my friends reading this, but I honestly don't care that you just got out of the shower and are not just putting on a pot of coffee. I mean, sorry, but it's true.
So what are we to do with twitter?
People have been promoting it as a way to stay in touch with long distance friends, but I think that's wrong. I think the focus should be as much as possible on a local approach. Twitter should not just update about a person's life but encourage action and socialization. The killer feature that I would love to see would be some sort of invitation/event focus. While this works in an informal manner, I feel like it could be easily encouraged, and actually having the feature would, one hopes, promote using it in such a manner. Aside from that, I suppose the only way to make it useful is to make sure that your friends don't post inane crap and clutter up your stream. I'd be willing to get SMS updates for invitations, but if they're just messages about you going to the library (which I feel is just a very passive aggressive invitation) then I'm going to start billing you. This is, of course, assuming that you're going to try out the service at all and, let's face it, that's a big assumption.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get some coffee. I'll be sure to update you every step of the way.
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Comments from site editors have a darker background than comments from everybody else.See, I'm amused by Twitter. Could such a quick-burst update be useful for our blog here? About events and the such (from local campaign canvasses to metro to whatever). I do worry about clutter, though...
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I keep thinking of trying out Twitter again but their why page really doesn't do it for me and I remain at a loss as to why I should, other than to have yet another excuse to play with my phone.. which I think is really the only reason anybody uses the thing.
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I agree their why page is lacking, but we could use it on our contributor pages, in-between the bio and our posts. Or, if you're looking for a simple purpose, how about applying it for the various political events we plan to attend (canvasses, happy hours, etc)? I have my own little twitter feed now, and I'd love to link it in some way to this site, since I'd only update periodically with political mumbo-jumbo.
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Ooooh, CES Twitter seems easy...
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I give up on Twitter already. It took me about 4.3 minutes to become fed up.
My problem, maybe this is a common problem, is that I don't know anyone else who's on there. (Except Michael) If I did, maybe it wouldn't feel so much like sitting in a dark room talking to myself. At least I know the blog has two or three loyal fans...
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oh, I'm gidyczd on twitter - I'll have CES updates like whoa
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