Curious About Twitter

The cover article of the June 15, 2009 issue of Time magazine by Steven Johnson discusses “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live” (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html), and it got me thinking more about Twitter. One of Johnson’s more interesting points is how users of Twitter have created their own ways to use the site. An extension is a discussion of add-on applications on sites like twitter, google, the iPhone, etc.

A Few Things I Find Fascinating about the Idea of Twitter:

1. We get to find out small, everyday details about friends, family members, mentors and even celebrities without really disturbing them. We can keep in touch with people on astrangely human, immediate level. From a pure lurking standpoint  I think that is great, because isn’t the biggest loss of a friend of family member swhohas moved away or gotten too busy to spend time with us that we lose those little moments.
2. The idea of a strict character limit (140) fascinates me : in browsing around the Twitter site the other day, i am struck by how poetic some tweets are, whether by accident or design. I once wrote a haiku in my journal daily for a month as my only journaling, trying to capture the essence of what had happened. Tweets can become a whole new art form, something great to think about instead of the death of letter writing.
3. We’ve also been whining a lot the last few years about how the internet was supposed to be the ulitmate democratic tool,but the glut of so much stuff out there has made it sometimes difficult to find the things we actually care about. Steven Johnson points out that with Twitter, a whole archive of links and information is being created, and that your network of follwers and followees may be a great first place to look for information that you need.
4. Portability. Because you can use services like Twitter and Facebook while virtually never actually logging into the website through feeds on other websites, portable phones, and the like means we can customize things to our liking, and not be subject to twitter’s ways of organizng and setting up andstyling things. I recently switched by browser homepage to google because I find I can have the sutom information about news, weather,a nd diversions that I want.
5. I do wonder, though, if I started posting tweets about what I’m doing/eating/going/etc on twitter, wouldn’t that be opening me up to criminals/stalkers/and even further sense of never being disconnected from the world. Granted, you can choose when, what and how often to post, but I already get complaints from people because i frequently trurn my cell phone off.
6. Would it get old seeing the boring posts by friends and family members who overdo it? Or who rant about pet causes? I have a facebook account and have experienced tht, but have also learned how to hide friends in that category.

I’m writerbat on twitter.  Maybe I’ll try posting a few tweets and finding some people to follow. If you have a twitter account and want me to follow you, let me know.

Tags: twitter