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.

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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! :)

[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...

[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.

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...