good.
Well it’s about time I wrapped up this whole “Twitter is…” thing. I still haven’t really got a good grip on what Twitter is and I think that’s because with a lot of these social tools there’s a very personal element to it that means the different tools mean different things to different people. I mean, look up any definition of blogging and you’ll get the same old same old, “a weblog”, “self-publication of a series of articles”, etc etc. What you won’t get is a good description or understanding of why people blog, why it matters so much too them and why they continue to do it.
Twitter is the same. The definition is easy, it’s a micro-blogging tool. It has the same draw as blogging but it’s quicker, more concise. You’ve got 140 characters to say what you’re doing, that’s it.
Why I like it is easy. For me Twitter is like the reflex arc of the worldwide web. On Twitter you see things happen, you hear about things going on before most people have a chance to even consider them. You react to them and then you have plenty of time to think about them a little more.
Without Twitter you lose that immediacy of connection.
i’m laid on my disappointingly deflated airbed at Latitude with a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I love coming to festivals. You can just forget the world exists. It’s like its just a little community of music lovers just here to enjoy themselves. When you come to a festival it’s easy to see the inner workings of social media in action, in real life. Self-policing, spontaneous group formation, etc etc. The best bit though, just enjoying it!
In a couple of hours I’m heading off to Latitude and hopefully having some fun in the sun. More than likely the British weather will get hold of us and get us very wet but hey, I’m with friends, who cares!
So the only thing I’ll be taking is my Nokia N95. That means I’ll have access to video, photo and text entry to the web. In reality that means that while I’m there then I’ll only have access to Twitter. In theory I could have access to all my video websites and to Flickr and upload stuff from my phone but 3G just doesn’t cut it really. It’ll do it but probably only the once before I hit my fair use policy.
Come on mobile operators, catch up with the tech that’s on my phone…please!
(Asynchronous) Instant Messaging on masse (depending on the size of your network obviously)
As proved quite nicely by Loic Le Meur when he asked, “What would you do if you were CEO of Seesmic?”
God know how long it took him to sift through all the answers from Twitter and Seesmic (I see Seesmic as video Twitter) but he has started at least.
Social.
I always overlook the obvious but Twitter is Web2 so it does all of the things Web2 stuff does most of the time.
Everywhere. The only place I’m without Twitter is on an aeroplane. If I have my phone or my laptop then I have Twitter and many of it’s apps.
The closest I come to that internally is updating my MS Communicator status.
A lightening fast broadcasting tool.
I’m thinking aloud here but I’ll come back and put it all together.
One of the reasons I love Twitter is the speed and efficiency of it. Having only 140 characters makes you get to the point very quickly.
BBC News and CNN Breaking News are just two of the news services that have cottoned on to this and used it to their advantage. However, we all know though that social reporting, or whatever you want to call the public reporting of news, far outstrips the speed of traditional news outlets and Twitter allows you to follow news for your network. Similar to how an RSS reader feeds you news from your sites of choice.
Also, combine Twitter with TwitPic and you can go from event, through photo to distribution to your network in under 2 mins using nothing more than your phone. Just like I did when I got excited about my steaks.
Where’s the “behind the firewall” business case for it though? System outages, tissue donors, advertise spare capacity! Anything where the communication needs to be short and swift and delivered to a large network of interested parties quickly.
This presentation came through via my RSS feed. I love it. Very simple and very eloquent. I’m liking what I see from these IBM guys and gals.
That’s the question I’ve been asked to answer at our next DIGWWW gathering. DIGWWW is our little lunchtime community at work where we all get together and talk about cool stuff that’s going on on the web. It’s focussed a lot around Web2 and it’s where most of the fertilizer for our internal wiki and blogs has come.
Needless to say, “It’s a microblogging platform where you have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?”" will not suffice as the answer.
So what is Twitter? I guess I’ll need to think about it for a while. I haven’t yet built up the eloquent concise vocabulary that Luis, Gia, Suw or Euan use to describe this stuff so it may take me a little while to come up with the answer.
I’d love to hear your answers, they’ll save me a lot of brain power!
Sid.
I doubt they do but it certainly felt that way today.
I was in a quiz at a departmental BBQ today and I knew nothing. I was rubbish. Everyone around me knew so much more about art, history, geography, general knowledge, etc etc etc.
I realised I never remember anything anymore, I just rely on online resource for all of the facts.
Can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. One thing is for sure, I’ll never win a pub quiz if they keep outlawing the use of mobile phone!
