Chirp.

[cathyr19355]

Today, I opened an account on twitter.com.

Why? Because landley and fadethecat have recently done so.

I'm still trying to figure out what the point of twitter is. To my mind, it combines the annoying elements of both blogging and IMing without incorporating the good points of either. So why twitter? To have a mini-blog on your phone? Since I can read and post to my LiveJournal from my Blackberry, I still don't see the point.

But maybe I'll find a use for twitter now that I have an account. So, for now, chirp.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

It's not for everyone, sure. I find it's a way to channel my stream of consciousness babble so that it feels like someone is listening--even if there's no response--while in theory saving more interesting extended things for my livejournal.

It's mostly making me realize that I don't have a lot to post on LJ except my stream of consciousness "Today was like every other day" babble. But that just means I need to get better at coming up with interesting things to talk about.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

If it does something for you, great! But I'm willing to experiment, for awhile anyhow.

But that just means I need to get better at coming up with interesting things to talk about.

Or, maybe it means you need to post to LJ less often, and do other forms of writing instead. :-)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Possibly that too!

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I have an account, http://twitter.com/marsgov, but I don't use it yet. I think of it as a micro-blog... I am not certain how I'll use it just yet.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Well, let me know if you figure out how you'll use it. :-)

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll start sending out a few tidbits and see if anyone follows me.

The real question is whether I need two streams: one for profeessional updates and another for personal twaddle.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

I've changed my twitter account to http://twitter.com/MosheYudkowsky, on the theory that I should use this for business/outreach/pr. If I need a personal stream I'll build it separately.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Ah. In my line of business, most of my clients have probably never even *heard* of twitter. :-)

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

My former largest client (and now my largest source of referrals) operates entirely by IM. I found this out when, during a discussion with the CEO, he pulled out his cell phone and said "let me take care of that right now" and promptly started to use IM instead of voice.

And the W3C uses a terrific IRC client. It's tied into the teleconferencing bridge, and you can even take meeting notes online that automagically turn into properly-formatted minutes.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Of course, you're not a lawyer who works primarily for insurance companies--two groups that tend to be naturally behind the times.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Having looked at a few twitter accounts, it seems mostly pointless to me, too. There is at least one actual use I have a seen. A fellow running a web site has a twitter account which he uses to report problems, or rather his awareness of them and what he's doing about them, on a site other than his own. That way if the site is down or something he can still get word out, "I know about it. Here's what's happening."

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

But why can't he just send text messages? Or make telephone calls? I suppose twitter would do for an impromptu debugging log--especially if the geek doing the debugging was seeking advice from a distant friend, as esrblog sometimes does.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The site he has is a journaling site with a few thousand users. He doesn't use Twitter to notify tech support folks, but to keep his users informed.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I see. So there is a defined community with a reason to be interested in 140 character posts from him. Okay, I can see that as working too; that's three specialized uses for twitter so far.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

The twitter stuff I see on LJ is mostly just irritating. I'm not sure there's a good use for it in the social context. I do see the value of the support use vakkotaur is talking about.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

As I said, if you need a log of IMs, twitter seems to be the easy way to go. But most IMs just plain aren't worth logging, IMHO.

[qwyneth.livejournal.com]

I'm qwyneth on twitter, and ishaa is, well, ishaa. We use it for little tidbits every so often, usually funny things or frustrations. I really enjoy following Dooce's twitter. One of my friends and I keep up on each other's lives more closely through Twitter than we could otherwise, since we live in different areas and don't often get the chance to chat on the phone all that much. Twitter's not necessarily for everyone, but I enjoy it.

Edited to add: And, fortunately, if you don't want to use it or follow specific people, you don't have to! :)

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I'm aware that one can be selective about whether to follow particular people and that you don't need to have twitter on your phone or Blackberry. But for most purposes (for an exception see my reply to vakkotaur above) I don't see a reason to have what, to my mind, amounts to a log of instant text messages.

Of course, it could be that I don't fully appreciate the limits of IMs--I haven't used them much. If you find it useful for keeping up with people, that's fine. Me, I'd rather use LJ for that. :-)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm reminded of one other interesting thing I've seen twitter used for, though I haven't tried it yet myself: fiction. There's Othar (from Girl Genius)'s Twitter, if you haven't already seen that one, where he casually relates snippets of his wacky steampunk adventures. That sort of IC fiction can be pretty interesting. And a friend of mine uses one of his Twitter accounts, monkeylimit, for tiny little snippets of delicious fiction, no more than 140 characters long.

...now I'm pondering the use of Twitter for those sort of sub-drabble microfiction uses. Darnit! I don't need another account...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I grant that twitter could be useful for developing skill with microfiction. It enforces a hard character limit, and the "having a log of your entries" feature would serve a useful purpose.

You might actually find an account for that purpose helpful in developing your chops as a fiction writer, but that's not something I'm in the market for right now.

Okay, we have two specialized functions for twitter so far. God, I love on line discussions....

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

My monkeylimit friend also notes that when he posted a frustrated note about a Comcast issue on Twitter... he got contacted by a Comcast representative scanning the Twitter feeds for references, and thus was able to deal with the problem faster.

Which I find nearly as creepy as I do cool, but it's interesting to see the different ways people approach the service.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Wonder if Verizon scans twitter? I've wanted them to do something about my damned land line for ages... Worth a try, I suppose.

For my part, I'm following twitters of the three major Presidential candidates, in the hopes of being able to carve out enough attention to get news on them in 140-character soundbites. We'll see how that works.

[ddelony.livejournal.com]

I have an account and I thought it was a white elephant until I found the IM version. You can track topics such as "Linux" and see what people are talking about. I've found out about more than a few cool new apps and Web sites.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

And here I am, trying to find ways to have to track *fewer* channels of information, rather than more.... :-0

Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

What I'm seeing from analysts studying Twitter, IM usage, etc, is an increasing trend, especially among teens and 20-somethings, to basically conduct all their social life through their cell phones. What Twitter gives you that IM doesn't is a sort of "broadcast what I'm doing". An example I saw was "Going to XXX for lunch; anybody hungry?" which resulted in 4 or 5 people who happened to be nearby gathering for lunch. A sort of "cloud" of social information, an awareness of your social group and its activities that reflects electronic closeness rather than physical.

Carried even farther, you get "gathering in the XXX lounge in SL", resulting in Second Life casual get-togethers. This is the kind of thing that happens in my office by people strolling down the hall saying "lunch?" -- which doesn't work if the people you work with are more than a 1-minute stroll away.

The challenge for us old guys seems to be, as you point out, finding ways to track many channels of information at once. We are (most of us!) reasonably good at screening our physical environment for relevant info in the total buzz; there's a good chance, for instance, that if you and I both happened to be in one of the downtown SEPTA stations at the same time we would notice each other despite the crowds and noise. It's not so different to imagine screening the information environment.

Which isn't to say I've figured out how to do it...

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I screen information by being very, very, selective about what I read, when I read it, and what channels of information I use. I can scan reading material pretty fast, but I have *no* patience with weeding out wheat from tons of chaff and dreck. Which is why I don't follow a whole lot of blogs, other than my Live Journal. Yes, I'm missing a lot of interesting information--but I'm not missing information that is *vital* to me, and I'm not stressing myself out trying to read everything in the world that might conceivably be interesting.

I can understand how some people might want to use twitter to create small personal networks to make it easier to "hook up". But the fact of the matter is that I have never had a large enough social network to feel a strong interest in technology that would assist me in doing so. So maybe the "social" aspect of twitter is not just a generation thing, maybe it's not even primarily a generation thing. It may be an extrovert-type of thing.

Thanks for the comment; yours is the most interesting explanation of "what twitter is good for" that I've read so far.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

I definitely think there's an introvert/extrovert dimension to it, just as there is to who walks down the hallway looking for people to go to lunch with, and even who notices when someone walks down the hall. People vary widely in their ability to screen that kind of chaff as well.

But that's not all of it. I grew up with several siblings and I have four children. I can work or read without difficulty completely surrounded by noise, people and chaos. At the same time, if in the middle of that chaos someone says "Mom", or mentions a rare topic I'm interested in (say, Amtrak), I'll hear it and surface from my book/task to see what's going on. There seems to be an entire subculture growing up which has the same ability to pick what they want out of the electronic noise. I'm definitely not there yet, but I've also definitely observed it.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that there's an introvert/extravert dimension to how people screen information, but I find your anecdotal examples interesting. I have no problem with working around noise and picking out interesting details from it (when I was growing up the TV was on almost 24-7). That's different from deliberately trying to drink from the fire hose that is the Internet every day without making some hard decisions on what you will read, what you *might* read, at least sometimes, and what you won't read because life is too damn short.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but my point is that you (and I) perceive it as different, but there's a whole growing segment that seems to perceive it as the same, just a different kind of noise to filter. I'm puzzled but fascinated.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I see your point, but I'm wondering how much of that difference really is generational and how much is simply personal preference.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I have certainly been adopting new information technology. I had never viewed a website before the year 2000, regularly used e-mail before then. Now, I spend several hours a day reading and answering e-mails, and I surf and blog regularly.

Personally, I have very little patience with sorting through recommendations from acquaintances that "you really have to look at this website!" because I perceive reading through enough of the site to figure out whether there's anything there I care about as drudgery. It's not that I *can't* do it, or even that I can't do it fast enough, but doing it isn't effortless or fun; it's work. This is also my problem with IMing; it's work fiddling with typing messages into a Blackberry or phone, but much less work to speak the message into a phone or touch-type it into an e-mail or blog.