12.14.06
I’ve been using Twitter for a little while now, it allows you to post short snippets of text that get circulated to people who subscribe to your Twitter identity. For example, I may post that I’m making a cup of tea, everyone who has subscribed to that will get that little bit of information.
So far, so good, but it has something that makes it a little special. It integrates very smoothly with your mobile phone via SMS. I can be walking down the street and the desire to post overcomes me, I can then simply send a text message to the Twitter service and it will be pushed out to my contact’s mobile phones.
At first glance it seems utterly worthless, the posts are limited to 146 characters which makes it hard to write anything of substance. It is promoted as “A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” and this lends itself to posts about making a cup of tea, or about how you hate tinsel. I am no better for my last Twittering was “I think, Like DG, I shall make myself a nice cup of tea before tackling Wordpress install.“. Hardly ‘War and Peace’.
However, this belies the beauty of it. Once you have added a few friends (and more and more people are signing up as this meme spreads), then the inflow of short messages become like a Zen cloud of how people are feeling. Sure, Alice may be getting grumpy, but Bob is gearing up for a fun night out. You instantly become more connected to your friends even though this is a mostly one way communication.
In a world where many of our friends are our ‘blogmates’, where we are more likely to email than phone and where physically meeting people is becoming more of a rarity, Twitter allows us to feel more connected. The desire to keep in touch with friends, and to let them keep in touch with you leads to regular posting, and the less ‘important’ the post, the more you feel you are being allowed into that poster’s life.
It does spark some questions on privacy, while adults who have grown to use technologies like this are perhaps better prepared to self-censor, I worry a little about what children may divulge without considering the consequences. I also think that it is only a matter of time before someone drunkenly lets slip some ‘indiscretion’. We may have learned to not blog drunk, but with the ease of posting from a mobile phone it will be so much easier to slip. While you may make a fool of yourself at the office Christmas party, with Twitter you could reach a global audience.
I’m wondering what use other people or companies may put it to. It would be ideal for the organising of ‘flash mobs’ and on a more serious note it is an easy way to update people on the weather, local traffic and news or even sports results.
What Twitter may have unleashed is an ‘Open Source’ SMS subscription service and I am intrigued to see where it leads.
I think that Twitter is a lovely, lightweight web-app that may find surprising uses in the future.
You can see my Twitter here.
diamond geezer said,
December 14, 2006 at 17:38
Twitter is the return of simple one-thought blogging, but from anywhere, with virtually no effort required. No need to think for more than a minute, or hone your latest update to perfection, just type and post. It’s little and often, rather than a lot every now and again.
As a result I’ve learnt more about the everyday lives of certain bloggers in the last week than I have in several years elsewhere online.
I’ve also noticed that everyone else has a much more interesting life than me.
katy said,
December 14, 2006 at 19:38
I’ve never objected to the non ambulance posts, but will enjoy reading this new blog of yours. However, I can’t get the RSS feed to work. (I just use it to see when there is a new post) The Twitter RSS feed works fine.
I use NetNewsWire Lite.
pixeldiva said,
December 14, 2006 at 19:42
Twittering is clearly the new blogging.
I do find it much easier to twitter cos it takes up less brain space than thinking up a blog post (as can be clearly evidenced by my twitter timeline compared to my actual blog).
Anyway. Apropos of nothing at all – when I looked at the url, my brain separated it as men talk ipple, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what ipple was…
Jessica said,
December 14, 2006 at 20:06
Fantastic, love the blog and liking this too! Liking the idea so got myself a twitter, as I often think random things during the day, and also feel i cant let out my rants there and then so they dont get saved up!!
Abi said,
December 14, 2006 at 20:30
What’s a kipple?
Al said,
December 14, 2006 at 20:49
Ooh, shiny new blog. Don’t think twitter appeals to me though.
Katy: what RSS reader you using? I’ve found it works in Opera if you copy the feed address and add it manaully.
Tom Reynolds said,
December 14, 2006 at 20:52
Kipple – from wikipedia It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself.
katy said,
December 14, 2006 at 22:18
Dear Al,
Your advice worked. Thanks. Now I won’t miss anything.
Do You Twitter? « Cornell Finch said,
December 14, 2006 at 23:18
[...] veryone’s doing it. Well, not everyone. Only about 25,000 people so far. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Tom1 has an excellent explanation of whatTwitter is on his new blog. [...]
Robin said,
December 15, 2006 at 7:00
Wonderful, preparing to investigate Twitter now.
Jamie {SJA} said,
December 15, 2006 at 10:04
Nice to see you got a brand new shinny blog. Dont get it dirty lol
Gordon said,
December 15, 2006 at 11:25
Well hello, how long you been hiding here?
Twitter is a noise that birds make. That’s all I’m saying (here, I’ll expand on my LONG FORM blog… ;-) )
Twitter: What are you doing? at blog.delaranja.com said,
December 15, 2006 at 11:37
[...] It’s a simple service that let’s you post short messages on what you’re doing. It sounds useless but as usual if your social network is there, then the service starts to be really fun to use. Tom does a good explanation on the usefullness of it. [...]
Stevo said,
December 15, 2006 at 22:37
Twitter is great and I have added you in. Like yr blog a alot
Lauren Harris said,
December 19, 2006 at 18:59
Hey, first of all, your RandomActs Of Reality website rocks! I’ve been trying to post a comment on it for ages, but it won’t let me, mainly because all computers hate me,but what can you do?! Having both my dad and my step-mum (I’m 14) in the service,( Hey, guess where they met?!) I can sort of get where you are coming from, plus, I love stories about LAS mishaps!
Lauren
Clive and Sarah’s second eldest (and, probably,your only teen reader!)
vivdora said,
January 2, 2007 at 19:28
Thank you for introducing me to twitter, you may have noticed, I’m hooked