Twitter's beauty is in it's simplicity. Sure, it may reinforce a whole bunch of crap; but I can tweet something and follow up via email, phone, or in person. If you throw all your fish in one bucket, it's not all that effective. Once you build relationships, those 140 character tweets are bits of larger conversations.
For a lot of people, it's pure voyeurism. Waste of time, boring, yawn, who the f*** cares about a cat peeing on a carpet. For others, it's a tool that enables connections, relationships, and quick communications. It is what goes on behind the scenes that is magic. If you've ever gone to a tweetup, you'd see how twitter has helped created great friendships. I keep saying that it's not about how many followers you have, it's about the quality of your stream. I'm managing with 170 or so and I tweak as necessary. Just because I don't follow people back doesn't mean I don't read their tweets, I just do it offline. It's difficult to manage so much traffic at once. I also always reply to @ messsages. It has given me access to a worldwide network of experts and I've developed some great personal relationships as a result. I have better relationships with my twitter friends than with people I see every day. It fits my need and has made me even more productive. Like everything your use and participation is what you make of it. My wife also thinks it's lame, but she has no use for it, other than I can direct message her email account from twitter :) I think twitter is great, although their infrastructure has caused us all headaches at one time or another. It's not for everybody; however, it's made me rethink a lot of the way that I design interactions. -- Mario Bourque Web: www.mariobourque.com Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Twitter: www.twitter.com/mariobourque On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 6:35 PM, William Brall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can see how various elements of twitter can be useful. I see how it > changes the dynamics of various aspect. > > However, if we are going to bring up McLuhan, Will, let's take a > real analysis of the medium. > > The 140 character limit means you can't say much, which means the > value of the tweet is in immediate impact. And the value of the > device as a whole is in the ability to screen tweets to get a bead on > a topic. > > There are various twitter-using devices, like election.twitter.com > that are mining tweets to give a message, but that message is > cacophonous. It is also trite. > > It is reinforcing what is mainly negative. It reinforces ignorance, > group-think, misinformation, hegemony, trend-following, and impulsive > behavior. > > >From the perspective of McLuhan it is extremely hot, and that is why > it might have taken off so fast. However, it is also mainly > valueless. So it is analogous to gossip, only on a mass scale and > syndicated. > > It creates a culture where the quick idea propagates and the > well-structured is too slow to take hold. It is functionally the > opposite of intelligence. It is a lot like flocking behavior, only > textual. > > It is too slim to afford good arguments, it is too frantic to afford > good thought, and it is too uncontrolled to afford good masking. > > If you could control what you saw with a more meaningful value than > who you watch, it could be of real value, but by using that paradigm, > it forces the user to be constantly screening garbage. > > Even a simple Bayesian filter and a thumbs-up thumbs-down system > could create a valuable system. Where the meaningful is heard and the > various garbage is squelched. > > > > Will > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34682 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
