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Do you use Twitter? I'd like to know why. Seriously - I'm not being a smart-ass!
I mean, I check in every week or two to read Conan O'Brien's posts, see what the Onion has to say, and so forth, but even after years of being on the service, I have yet to uncover its utility as a communication tool.
For example, I could see it being useful if users got emails notifying us that someone responded to a post (or @ed at me), but as-is, the only way to have meaningful conversation on Twitter is to leave it on constantly and not "follow" very many people. Also, there's no threading, so how does someone know a conversation is going on unless they're following everyone who's a part of every conversation? And how does one figure out WTF is going on when visiting, say, a friend's Twitter page and seeing a bunch of random @thises and @thats?
Facebook feels like it actually does what Twitter was intended to do, in that you make short comments or post photos or links and people can respond to them right there in context. Took me a while to find FB's utility and warm to it, but now I see how it's a very handy tool - especially in how it simplifies communication to many and enables users to do things that would be challenging if they don't know HTML and don't want to mess around with technical stuff. On the other hand, FB limits posts to 420 characters, so posts are by definition not very complex - and Twitter only allows 120. Barely enough to write a complete sentence.
So Twitter consists of a cacophony of lonely little shouts - tweets, as from a bird sitting on a telephone wire hoping to get someone's attention, hoping usually in vain to find someone to sit on the wire with them and tweet in unison at the uncaring world around them.
Am I missing something, or is Twitter just a site for people to peep randomly into the lonely and vast Webiverse?
Thanks,
Chris
I mean, I check in every week or two to read Conan O'Brien's posts, see what the Onion has to say, and so forth, but even after years of being on the service, I have yet to uncover its utility as a communication tool.
For example, I could see it being useful if users got emails notifying us that someone responded to a post (or @ed at me), but as-is, the only way to have meaningful conversation on Twitter is to leave it on constantly and not "follow" very many people. Also, there's no threading, so how does someone know a conversation is going on unless they're following everyone who's a part of every conversation? And how does one figure out WTF is going on when visiting, say, a friend's Twitter page and seeing a bunch of random @thises and @thats?
Facebook feels like it actually does what Twitter was intended to do, in that you make short comments or post photos or links and people can respond to them right there in context. Took me a while to find FB's utility and warm to it, but now I see how it's a very handy tool - especially in how it simplifies communication to many and enables users to do things that would be challenging if they don't know HTML and don't want to mess around with technical stuff. On the other hand, FB limits posts to 420 characters, so posts are by definition not very complex - and Twitter only allows 120. Barely enough to write a complete sentence.
So Twitter consists of a cacophony of lonely little shouts - tweets, as from a bird sitting on a telephone wire hoping to get someone's attention, hoping usually in vain to find someone to sit on the wire with them and tweet in unison at the uncaring world around them.
Am I missing something, or is Twitter just a site for people to peep randomly into the lonely and vast Webiverse?
Thanks,
Chris
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I really tried to make it work for me by starting a project on there called Short Sadness but even that got stifling given their character limit.
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How do you use Twitter, though? How do you overcome the issues I noted? How do you figue out what anyone's talking about unless you only follow a few people and watch it religiously? Is there an email notification setting I can't find?
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But do you use it for conversations, and if so, how? Or am I trying to think of this tool in a way it's not designed to work?
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#ebz is a fabulous online game that wants you to post updates on twitter, and I loved it for about two monts before I got sick of it.
People do microfiction and micropoetry on twitter. I tried this once, when an editor asked for a short poem of mine for her twitterzine. Overall I think I will not try it again; microfiction is not for me, but it was a fun experiment.
I only follow a limited number of people and do not check my twitterfeed daily, but I did find some very interesting things that way.
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I think it is also a useful tool for people who are looking to build/maintain fan communities - good examples of that aspect are Amanda Palmer and Nathan Fillion, who both have personalities that lend themselves to a regular stream of entertaining tweets, and a willingness to actively interact with thier fans.
It is also good for sharing thoughts that may not warrant an entire blog post, but you still want to share, and, as you mentioned, a very good way to do announcements or say, "Hey, look at this cool thing I found!".
*Note: For varying degrees of 'small'.
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Twitter isn't something you can follow religiously, as far as I can tell. It's more like a throwaway in the moment while you happen to be there sort of application.
Although I watch it, I don't really use it often myself, other than to occasionally answer a question or comment back to someone. As my tweets are locked down only people I allow to follow me, I can't really comment back to dome of the people I follow.
I find it really frustrating that so many people have migrated from this venue to Facebook or Twitter, as I don't think either venue is suited to particularly interesting or deep conversation/interaction (although that is probably due to my choices as to how to use Facebook. I really do miss the sort of interaction this venue fostered, as recently as just a couple of years ago.
D.
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No I think you pretty much got it.
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Even more annoying? Foursquare.
I really don't care to see where someone is every time they move, unless say, it's for a pub crawl and I want to meet up with them along the way.
I'm sure it's most excellent for stalkers.
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Although... I can name one instance in which I saw Twitter work very well.
sh*t my dad says
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Having a client, like Tweetdeck, helps tremendously. I look at it as a braintrust. Who you follow makes a huge difference. I follow friends who work in the roleplaying game industry not to hear about what they're drinking or eating, but nuggets of game theory going back and forth in their conversations. What they're playing, what they're planning, that sort of thing. Twitter for me is more of spectator sport and an aggregator of thoughts by people I find interesting. Often it's also a heads up to links for tumbler blog posts or regular wordpress journal entries when more discussion space is needed. I find that I get more responses and communication through Facebook, but I do enjoy checking in on Twitter and threading comments.
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For me it's part asynchronous, high-latency chatroom, part RSS feed, but that's really just scratching the surface, if not outright Doin It Wrong.
For other people it's a political organizing tool: http://millicentandcarlafran.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/why-mooreandme-helped-and-how-twitter-busted-twelve-straw-men/ What it's good for for you -- and whether it's good for anything, for you -- is kind of an organic function of who you're following (and what they're using it for) and who's following you.
You can use it like a poor man's Facebook and a lot of people do, but that's only one of many ways to use it and not one of the better ones.
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Facebook I get, and use quite a bit more than I ever thought I would. Twitter not so much.
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I keep the number of people whom I follow on Twitter down to about 100. Anyone who posts very often (say more than 3 or 4 times a day) better be extremely interesting or they get dropped. I will not keep anyone who regularly tweets 10 more times in a day.
I do not know some of my 100 or so. Others I only know in passing. It is the right level of being advised of what is happening with them.
Twitter can be a great news source. For example, a year and a half ago we didn't know if KU's top basketball placers were going to return to the school. There was a banquet where they were going to announce what was happening and I quickly found 3 different people tweeting from the event. I knew what was happening 10-15 minutes before any of the official news services made an announcement.
Sff.net uses twitter to let users know what is happening if they are having service issues. It is an easy way to stay abreast of those issues when it is impossible to find out on their down web site and email servers. It is about the only thing which I set twitter to actually forward as text to my phone rather waiting until the next time I log in.
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Someone may make a great reply to you after I make this post, or you may do the same, but I will never see them.
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