one-liners at twitter
I first heard about twitter a few months ago when I had some communication with Chris Brogan over the whole network2.tv thing, and I noticed he had a twitter account. Later I also noticed that Schlomo uses this, and then one day I decided to join it, try this web2.0′y thing out.
I like it.
I like oneliners, snippets of information.
I like that I can receive notifications on my cell phone for free.
I like the flow of information, even though the signal/noise ratio isn’t too good. There is a lot of chatter going on at twitter, but the informal tone also helps, helps us communiate perhaps more spontaneous, share experiences with less filters.
Yesterday, I read a few interesting blog entries on twitter, and especially this one by Elizabeth Lawley gave me some ideas.
Here is one quote from her:
What Twitter does, in a simple and brilliant way, is to merge a number of interesting trends in social software usage–personal blogging, lightweight presence indicators, and IM status messages–into a fascinating blend of ephemerality and permanence, public and private.
(my bold)
She goes on to talk about presence (which Paul Kapustka also wrote about yesterday, although from a different perspective)
But status messages have no permanence to them, and require some degree of synchronicity–people have to be logged into IM, and looking at status messages, while I’m there. Because Twitter archives your messages on the web (and can send them as SMS that you can check at any time), that requirement for synchronous connections goes away.
Elizabeth also mentions the lightweight nature of twitter, which I really like. Twitter works for me because we are all confined to 140 characters. If my twitter includes a really long url, the system automatically converts it to a tinyurl, which is a very nice, simple feature.
There are quite a few points of criticism to twitter, and one of them is that it is a system that helps us stay in that “continuous partial attention” while we lose the important questions; cluttering our information flow. I don’t think it has to be that way, but I certainly don’t have the answers here.
Currently I am trying to emulate Robert Scoble’s experience with the information (over)load by adding all his 800+ friends to my own account.
How will our brains adapt to all this information? All these bits of data ticking in to our cell phone or computer monitor?
Will we be even more scattered, or will we manage to somehow gather things together in a better way than before?
I don’t know yet, but I will try get my own experiences with this.
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Been putting off trying twiter for to long. I’m going to signup right now.
If I’m not already. My username will probably be mmeiser like it always is. Will look for you.
There’s two amazing concepts at work with twiter.
Essentially if I understand correctly all their really doing is maiking a party line out of txt messaging. You can add or remove anyone from your party line.
The to concepts though are “ambient information” or “ambient tech” as it was called by some MIT people who started a company by the name of ambient technologies. All they did last time I checked was represent simple things like the stock market, the weather or traffic with these glowy rubber balls. But the concept is wicked awesome. Twiter is not nearly so pretty but it’s infinitely more sophostiocated and useful as a study in how to make ambient information useful.
The second big concept is telepresence. I’ve talked about this infinitely with photos. Photos are in my opinion the height of telepresence. They conveige more info than words and can be snapped and sent instantly. While there is a little more time in transit if there’s any kind of cache mechanism this erases any hassels. On the sender end it’s… snap photo, choose email, click send… and you’re done. It’ll send in a few second in it’s own due course. On the recieve end it’s not much of an issue, just a few seconds to recieve a thumbnail on the phone. But this could potentially be a huge issue with a lightweight service like twiter. Won’t know until I try.
I assume people sending video and audio are VERY rare with twiter. Nathan Frietas of Cruxy.org has suggested I try it with his Mux.am which will send pretty much any video on the web to a phone as 3gp via txt message… thereby making it capable to move video into twiter.
Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. The thing is it’s all about interactive telepresence and ambient information services. Love the concepts. It’s about time I joined up.
nathan frietas, you, schlomo? Who else. I’ll have to build up a network right away and dive right in.
-Mike
I knew you would love twitter, though I think the signal/noise ratio is pretty damn high…
though with the 150 character limit, that should keep Meiser a little quiet:)
As I have absolutely no reason to kiss up to you, I trust you’ll take this as I mean it: I *love* the way you Twitter. The way you put thoughts together is a part artistry and a part data distilled. It reminds me of the neat things you used to be able to find in the margins of Mondo 2000 magazine. : )
–Chris…
Oh my, Mondo 2000. I went to a SF party of theirs around ‘91.
mmeiser: could you elaborate on some of that?
we should podcast it.
schlomo: yeah, i absolutely love the length limitations.
chrisbrogan: thanks - i love things that are on the margins. coffeetable books filled with margins *sigh*. thanks for the compliment - i try to work with the medium
ok this is so strange. i signed up (according to twitter) 19 days ago and then forgot all about it. but then i sign up to everything
I don’t get it…
Just like with Vlogging
Must be a bad connection…
[…] About « one-liners at twitter […]
I have a weird habit of signing up for everything, too, but this Twitter thing…I’m not sure I get it, and not getting it makes me feel dumb. So far, with one update, Twitter has left me feeling dumb.
Oh, yeah. Still don’t get it. Still feel dumb.
You have a great website. Keep up the good work.
Got here and seen your stuff - way to go!
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