are you on twitter? yeah?! me too! we should be friends…
spill your guts in 140 characters or less.
its like a parlor game with only one rule but infite variations (via @hodgman)
what started as a simple status update has evolved into so much more. its becoming increasingly difficult to stay close to people, even those i know in ‘real life’that aren’t on the service. the ability to codify messages with @, d, and # has created a complex and delicate way of communicating with other users
its kind of like IM but trumps it because I don’t have to be signed on to get your messages
it also allows you to manage your attention. you can follow me, but i don’t have to follow you. i can follow broadcasts, but am not forced to interact with your company. feel free to be a follow-whore. i don’t recommend it, but what ever floats your boat.
twitter allows you to keep tabs on people you care about. you don’t even have to talk directly and you still feel like know what’s going on in their life. in fact you’ll grow closer over time as each twitter heart beat makes it way out and into each others feed.
you got questions? we got answers. and opinions. and hoaxes. and probably some other stuff you didn’t really want to know.
some clients will even geo-code your exact location with each tweet. go ahead and try it and pick up a stalker or two. it really works. random friends show up to events i’m at all the time, only because i tweeted about it. which is actually kind of rad.
i’ve thrown away my rss reader. if it doesn’t bubble up on twitter, it didn’t happen or it doesn’t matter.
the first picture of the us airways crash in the hudson was posted to twitter. the people on the ground are beating journalists to the punch left and right and being able to report from the hot spots in the here and now.
some are replacing their blogs with this short format prose. some people, like @kathyseirra can say more in a 140 characters than you or I can say in an entire novel.
and for other talented pranksters use it as a humor platform, unlike any where else on the web.
but really its just a place to be real. to be yourself. to post a real picture of you instead of a logo, and speak from the heart, and out in the open
or to impersonate fictional characters. or celebrities. or both. you think that you’re following the real @tinafey? think again.
from the unremarkable moments of life…
…to the groundbreak, historic moments none of us will forget.
its clear that twitter has become a new communication medium. and as a platform has spawned 2000+ applications, add-ons, plug-ins and value-adds. there are more interesting ways to use twitter than there are face book apps.
and these tools allow you to send those messages to all your other social networks, so you never have to ignore another invite to spider-monkey-zombie-mob-robot-wars again.
and this is just the beginning. with so much of our collective unconscious being poured into the twitter machinery, i can only imagine what kind of pulse on the human condition they can derive from their data set. i’m sure we’re about to find out though… a business model is expected to be announced in 2009.
so if you’ve #FAILed to sign up yet, do so now. it may seem like a big waste of time at first, but you’ll get the value soon enough. just follow a couple of cool people, ask them what add-on tools they like to use, and your way of using twitter will emerge, and you’ll be hooked like the rest of us.
4 thoughts on “what are YOU doing?”
Eric,
Your talk was really good. Your topic was tricky, since you risked preaching to the choir with the crowd you were presenting to. But, you added a conversation to the topic that most folks, including myself, wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.
The folks who I still have to convince to use Twitter®, I’ll send them here for the lowdown.
I appreciate that, Cory. I just wish I had put in the time to write this post in advance as practice, as I think it would have come off a little more polished that it did last night.
Eric,
Your talk was really good. Your topic was tricky, since you risked preaching to the choir with the crowd you were presenting to. But, you added a conversation to the topic that most folks, including myself, wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.
The folks who I still have to convince to use Twitter®, I’ll send them here for the lowdown.
I appreciate that, Cory. I just wish I had put in the time to write this post in advance as practice, as I think it would have come off a little more polished that it did last night.
Eric,
Great presentation last night. If you haven’t seen it already check out this TED vid from Ted Williams: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html
Again great job and thanks!
Cheers,
Mark
Yeah, I’ve seen Evan’s talk. Stole the phone in the toilet tweet idea from it