May 15th, 2008, 7 Comments »
About a month ago, I wrote about how I was conflicted about yet professionally obligated to spend more time on Twitter. It’s a month later, so I thought I’d check in on my adoption progress.
Something that Todd said in a comment on that post resonated:
I found myself thinking that broadcast was the wrong word for twitter, as it tends to start working more like IM over time, only not as isolated.
Looking back at my Twitter stream, most of my tweets (I’m still displeased by that word) are replies to other people, or links to something. I’m not sure why, but I’m disinclined to post tweets that answer the default Twitter question, “what are you doing?”
21st Century IRC
I used to hang out in a Skype channel that included 30 or 40 Vancouverites from the tech community. I’d let in run in the background, and remark on some tech news or bemoan the Canucks as the mood struck me. Twitter has replaced that as a kind of 21st century IRC.
I have a link blog in the sidebar of this site. It’s a kind of clearing house for stuff that interests me, but doesn’t merit a full post on my site. A couple hundred people subscribe to it, and I really don’t know how useful people find it (I’ve never asked).
Now every time I spot a link I’d like to pass on (such as this blog of things that look like a duck), I have to decide whether it goes in Twitter, in the link blog, or both. Both takes too long, and I have yet to develop criteria for what goes where.
I asked, on Twitter, about just streaming my link blog into my Twitter stream, but I got a couple of negative responses. Understandably, people (presumably they were link blog subscribers) didn’t want to get repeated content. When I first signed up for Twitter many moons ago, I did that with my blog’s RSS feed, and somebody told me it wasn’t kosher.
They’re probably right–I find little value in tweets that read “New Blog Post: http://www.verysmallurl.com/fdfdla”. If I want to read your blog, I probably already subscribe to it. Obviously the etiquette on all this stuff is still emerging.
The number of people I follow is up from 33 to 58. The increase is mostly due professional interest (I’m following some top tech bloggers). I tend to give people a trial run, and if I find what they’re writing about interesting, I stick with them.
No Debate Team at This High School
The major frustration that I’ve found on Twitter is that it inhibits debate. I’ve found that it’s nearly impossible to have a cogent argument that doesn’t devolve into sound bites on the platform. I love debate–it’s one of the reasons I spend leisure time online. Twitter seems to act a bit like high school in this regard–either people hurl insults or just talk nice (I know high schools have debate teams, but that’s where my analogy breaks down).
So, the experiment continues. Any suggestions on how I should handle the link blog vs. Twitter issue?
7 Comments »
December 28th, 2007, 15 Comments »
Over on our book blog, I point to Vanessa’s excellent and comprehensive post about Twitter. I also get a little snarky about my personal experiences with the tool:
On a personal note, I have very mixed feelings about Twitter. I’ve found that it’s kind of an Ego Distillery. Blog posts, obviously, tend to be pretty self-centered. But because Twitter is restricted to 140-characters per post, it really seems to bring out the self-importance in everyone.
Twitter asks the question “what are you doing?” I find that the answer is too often “something really important”.
That’s why I only post quotations from songs and poems in my own Twitter account. It ensures that I don’t add to my already burgeoning self-centered online presence, and my Twitter followers probably enjoy a break from the banalities of their friends and colleagues lives.
It’s slightly odd to quote myself quoting Vanessa, but I’ve been meaning to express my uneasiness with Twitter outputs on this site, and this was a handy way to do so.
Am I alone in thinking of Twitter as an Ego Distillery?
You might rightfully ask why I’m using the tool at all. And you’d be right too. Simply put, I need to keep an eye on Twitter for professional purposes. Plus, it’s a fun game to think of good quotes.
15 Comments »
November 27th, 2007, 4 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, I made some silly comics to promote a product review to some bloggers. I used Comic Life, an easy-to-use app that comes with OS X.
Rebecca and John just got their printer, and Rebecca made a fun comic of her own to, uh, celebrate its arrival.
That’s when I had this week’s free idea: a microblogging platform based around comic book frames. It works like Twitter, except that each time you want to post, you choose an image (probably of yourself) and a type of thought or speech balloon. Then you type your message.
Here’s my, er, prototype:
The app would integrate with Flickr and other photo-sharing services, enabling you to choose from any of your photos, or photos with a particular tag. You could also use your webcam to snap a photo.
There’s obviously the problem of ‘twittering’ from your mobile device, but you could set up one or more default comic frames for posting on the go, or for when you couldn’t be arsed to make a new comic frame.
Ironically, what I’m describing feels slightly like what Flickr briefly was when I first saw it. Kind of a real-time chat with photo-sharing on the fly.
I suppose the downside is that it’s slower-per-post than Twitter would be, and people are very attracted to the enforced brevity (a side effect is that Twitter seems to be an Ego Distillation Engine, but more on that another time).
What do you think of this week’s silly idea? Maybe it already exists?
4 Comments »
November 17th, 2007, 8 Comments »
For professional reasons, I’m forcing myself to pay more attention to this whole microblogging/status trickle space. I believe I’ve discovered a way to update Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr and Facebook all at the same time. That would make life easier, certainly.
But I need a Jaiku invitation. If you’ve got one kicking around, please send it to me at darren {at} darrenbarefoot {fullstop} com. Merci.
UPDATE: Invite received, thanks to James. I am now Jaiku-enabled.
8 Comments »
