And why I think they should…
So here’s the deal, I use twitter, I use it a lot. Not as much as some others but I do use it a lot. As thus I can say that I understand the power of this micro blogging site, the ponderous things that this “Social enabling” site does for us. I have tracked the progress of my favourite geeks throughout the San Diego comi-con this year without actually being there, I have been given up to the minute updates for this year’s Shift Happens and I have experienced the thoughts and feuds between Will Wheaton (Wesley crusher for the uncultured….) and his cat.
Things that Twitter has done for the world
I figure I should put forward some good things to come out of the twitter-verse, and some of them really are good. It has standardised most civilised comment threads, before you might see this.
Well hamface223 I think you are incorrect. And….*wall of text*
This, whilst serving a purpose, is sometimes completely lost on the intended user, unless sent as a direct response or email alerts spam your account every time someone posts another comment, but thanks to twitter we now have the @. OK well we had it before, it has been a convention of email since nigh on the beginning, but using it as a reference to a username makes it so much easier to read conversations, and if necessary interject with your own ravings. Basically the @ makes it easier to see responses when scanning through, it’s not too intrusive and gives a more direct response to proceedings.
Ok so there are better examples (Tweetups / Twitter meet-ups, tweeps (twitter peeps) moving on injustice; namely Adam Savage from myth busters and AT&T not really injustice but showed potential power of thousands of followers) but I stand by it Twitter has given us a lot without a lot of people realising it.
So Why don’t you use twitter??
I don’t have enough friends to follow me.
Ok this is a common one, people think that you need droves of people to follow you on twitter to see it as a viable platform. This is not true, your tweets show up all over the place, in searches in trends everywhere, people see what’s going on in the “twitterverse” and you are contributing, ok so it’s not live interaction ala Friend-Feed (See later post about collaborative communication on the internet) but it is part of something larger. Heck if your interesting enough people will find you.
It’s not as good as Facebook / beebo…etc
Ok let’s kill this one off nice and quickly, Twitter is nothing like Facebook, it is nowhere near. Yes unfortunately they are grouped in the social networking websites umbrella but they just aren’t the same beast at all. And Facebook is a beast, a foul beast of unimaginable horror and disgust, but if you use it you already know this. FB (Facebook) is a incredibly Narcissistic platform, it is completely “look at me look at me!” in its approach to social networking. It used to be that it was simplified, easy to use and a stripped out version of the then bloated, useless spam riddled MySpace, and now it is the new bloated, useless and spam riddled Facebook; filled with badges of social distinction (via www.twitter.com/hannahnicklin @hannahnicklin) and essentially the “News Feed” is a group of people shouting at each other. I used to love the aspect of being able to track my social life in one website, but now I rarely use the full version of Facebook, checking only my messages on the iPhone or my email.
I don’t see the point. Isn’t it a little me me me?
Well it is if you use it for the purpose they intended…ok this one might be a little odd but here we go. Twitter is not all about the “What are you doing now?” question, I mean Yeh that’s the opening gambit and for a while you will use it for that, but it can be so much more. For example, again my good tweep and real life friend @hannahnicklin essentially summed up the Shift Happens conference this year, tweeting directly from the floor (and abusing her battery at the same time) I have gained a cult following from posting bizarre pictures of my friend @bearpiglett, and people such as @documentally posting somewhat cryptic messages about his chainsaw with sufficiently creepy videos too…oh and being somewhat of a tech buff so I am told! But yea this still might seem a little me me me. But it is not just that.
As I stated before Twitter is a collaborative space, people update and blog on twitter, and you choose to follow them, you don’t have to read all of the posts, I do because I am like that, but you don’t have to. It’s selective, and as many people have said the shift in media is towards the selective, the collaborative and the user generated / driven. The iPlayer from the BBC is a good example of this. People choose what to watch and when to watch it, for free. They select the television they like, it is huge and it is so successful that other media companies are trying to shut it down, but they won’t. The other great contender is Spotify, a legal completely free music service (if you don’t mind the Ads, and I don’t) it has user generated playlists you can share, and the ability to reach millions of people. This is what Twitter is part of it is more than the sum of its social networking components it is something more, something intangible, something I feel passionately enough to write about.
Something that has bored the pants off of you…
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