More about Twitter
I promised you some more thoughts about using Twitter, so here we go.
As you know, I went in doubting it’s usefulness. I still think there’s a whole lot of stuff I don’t care about on there, but in the process of using it, I think I’ve stumbled into some good stuff, mostly in the area of instant information sharing. For example, the other night I left a post that said I was researching things to do when we’re in San Antonio next month, and got a couple of quick responses with suggestions. That’s pretty cool. That’s useful.
As I see it, the problem with IM for me has always been that you just never know what the other person is doing when you send a message, or whether they care about what you have to say at that moment. Using Twitter, you can send out a question or something that you’re working on, and if any of the folks following you has an idea, or wants to talk about it, they can. As I’ve gotten hooked up to some more folks, I think those sorts of things will happen more and more, so I think there’s a really good chance I’ll continue using it.
On the other hand, I took a look at Scoble’s Twitter profile and the various conversations going on there. There’s lot of good ideas and conversation going on, lots of good information being shared, but I would have a really hard time keeping up with all of that and trying to have a life, so I think there’s a sweet spot, somewhere that has enough people connected to you to be able to share information really well, but not so many that you end up doing nothing but tracking Twitter.
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so in a way it’s like a slow-motion chat room 🙂
To some extent, yes, but one you and your friends don’t have to be focused on at the same time in order to have a conversation. Not much different than this comment. I got notified you left a comment by email and stopped filling out my NCAA bracket to come and reply. Twitter is similar in that I can get notified when one of my friends posts something, take a quick look and go back to what I was doing.
>…don’t have to be focused on at the same time…
right, that’s what i meant by “slow-motion.” i should have used “delayed” or “time-insensitive” perhaps.
it’s also different in that there’s not one “room” but rather a bunch of overlapping personal spaces – i.e. your circle of friends (who you see updates from) isn’t the same as mine, but our two circles overlap somewhat.
an interesting social experiment, if nothing else. i’m still curious how it can be used in a “productive” way – i can see for example that a company could use a private server to which all their employees posted and project teams could monitor.