When I first heard of Twitter a while ago, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever -- yeah, who in the world would want to constantly post "what I'm doing" for IM????? I'm not a teenager. I hate MySpace. I like talking to real people in the real world. Aren't we already fragmented and fast enough? IMing 140 characters at a time -- won't that just exacerbate the problems of modern society??
Then at SXSW, Twitter was unavoidable. A lot of people were excited about it -- so I signed up to try it out. I understood quickly how valuable it is in a group-event situation like a conference. If you had Twitter deliver to your phone, you could keep up with who was were -- even with people you don't know well, but would like to. It's a tool for being the coolest kid on the block, knowing which party or panel or place for dinner is the "best". It lets you just magically show up at the party where the people you want to be with are... you can intentionally "run into" someone at a restaurant and join them -- I wondered post-SXSW if I'd use Twitter in my regular life. I wondered if it had any value outside a technology conference, or a college campus (where you more easily find your friends), or such physically contained places. Two weeks later (and still without a IM phone plan -- so I only use Twitter from my computer), I have to say I absolutely LOVE IT! -- I LOVE TWITTER!! Why?? Well, its a super fast way to keep little tiny tabs on people who I care about, who are in other cities from me. When I'm on, it's a kind of constant connection. It's like being in the same house with someone when you aren't talking or doing anything together, but you are simply there together. I've noticed I check my email a lot less. I try to leave email alone so I can focus on one thing at a time, but frequently I get just bored enough or lonely enough while working (usual by myself) that I start checking the email compulsively. Which is never satisfying. I'm looking for connections to people / to my friends, and I end up with lots of junk, extraneous information, and people asking me for things -- which raises my stress level, overwhelms my brain, and creates little sense of community. Twitter on the other hand, does create community. It's just little bits of saying hi. Hi. I'm here. You are there. There's 3500 miles between us / 150 miles / 2000 miles, but I see you. We are both bored working out css bugs, or compressing videos, or trying to burn DVDs. Banal stuff. Not worth calling anyone or emailing anyone to say -- but I'll say it to the vague out there world. Hm. Meh. Hi. This is how it's going for me right now. I've called and skyped people a lot more since using Twitter -- having a small connection already open, I then want to say more or ask more + switch over to voice / live video. Which is cool. Rather than feeling disconnected and using the voice to connect -- it's like we are already connected and using the voice to take it deeper. I've even started new friendships that first started on twitter. I would have NEVER thought that was possible. Of course this only works with other geeks -- so it has no affect on all the relationships I have with non-geeks. And who knows what will happen over time. I wonder about a lot of things about it -- like do I want people I don't know subscribing to my twitter feed? How public do I want to be / writing as a "celebrity" to "fans", or how private do I want to be, writing as a friend to friends (and therefore being more casual / showing raw emotion more, rather than curating what to express). I like it that geek communities take on new technology as an experiment, using ourselves as the test animals. Twitter is still a big experiment -- one that I am enjoying very much. Jen Jen Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://jensimmons.com http://milkweedmediadesign.com 267-235-6967 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
