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]

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.