Twitter First Impressions
Oct 21st, 2008 by Carlos
I’ve been on Twitter for a little over a week now and I wanted to jot down some of my quick impressions of this social-networking site. For those of you that haven’t heard of it before, it’s kind of like Facebook and Blogging mixed together but stripped down of everything but the most basic stuff: you can only write messages that are no longer than 140 characters.
The Pros
- Brevity: I like the 140 character limit—it keeps others from blabbing and it makes everyone really think a little bit more about what they’re writing before sending it out into the world. Especially myself. I’m like Obama that way—I feel the need to explain every nuance of what I’m saying so I can go on and on when it’s really not necessary. The character limit is a fine way of forcing me to refine and reduce my thoughts.
- Immediacy: Someone can be sitting on the train and see an accident happen, they text in their tweet, and boom, everyone knows about it. The ability to text in a message from your phone is a very cool part of Twitter and one that I’ve used many times. The potential is huge for what you can do/report on with this service. Granted, once most phones have web access this might not be as big a deal, but for now it is.
- Commingling: It’s nice to see the people you follow all on one page “talking.” Instead of going to this person’s site and that person’s blog, you see what they’re up all on one page, which is pretty nifty.
The Cons
- More to oversee: Add Twitter to the long list of things you need to check up on. Facebook, email, the other email account, the blog, etc. It’s enough already.
- Repetitive: A lot of people link to their sites/blogs to highlight articles (I’m actually going to do that now with the Is a New Yorker Subscription Worth It? post), so it just becomes another way to say “Hey look at what I’m doing over on my site!” Which can get old.
- Banal: A lot of the stuff is, like Facebook, pretty useless. So you’re going for a walk now, great, nice to know. I’m using Twitter for this blog, not for personal use, so maybe that’s why this annoys me, but I still don’t care about the minutiae of someone else’s like—even if they are my friend/relative/spouse. Have a little privacy for crying out loud.
Overall
Obviously, it’s a little early for me to be finalizing any judgment on Twitter, but so far I like what it brings to the table. It’s pretty much what you make of it and right now I’m using it to express random thoughts in a really succinct way (which is kind of fun) and sharing my Urbanathlon time (which was 1:39 and I shall be posting more on this soon).
I don’t know how Twitter intends to make money, but that’s their problem, not mine. Until then, you can follow me here and enjoy such groundbreaking Tweets as:
Got my tix to see Aronofsky’s The Wrestler @ Chicago International Fikm Festival next friday
Make more= pay more taxes. Simple.
10 mile run+Soldier Field+my bum ankle=a very interesting Urbanathlon
And my favorite, which I intend to make a regular habit of because abbreviating these story ideas down to the bare essentials is a great exercise:
Story Idea: Men on the ship sailing back to Europe bringing first word of the discovery of America. Drama ensues.
Do you Tweet?
I actually like those “going for a walk” tweets, because I ask myself whether or not I want to go too.
I find the best way to handle twitter is through twhirl (or perhaps the new “tweet deck” where it’s its own thing and not another part of my browser.
When I’m working at home, it helps me feel connected. Plus it’s a good way to get to know some other bloggers on a friendly level, I met one now-IRL friend through twitter, a librarian who’s been really helpful, and just gotten to know some people better.
Or some days I ignore it.
I definitely hear what you’re saying about twitter. Lately, I’ve found twitter useful for tracking trends.
You can use this site to track specific keywords and how often people are using them on twitter (http://twist.flaptor.com/trends?gram=barack%20obama&table=1). It’s very similar to google trends. It’s pretty cool to mess around with. You might even find it useful for investing because you can see what lots of people are taking about immediately – what’s “in/cool/hip” etc.
There’s also twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com/) which has a tag cloud that is updated in real time of the most popular used words on twitter.
Lastly, this article from wired on the value of twitter is kind of insightful http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson.
@Brennan: Thanks for the links, I like the Wired article because the first time I heard about Twitter, that’s how I felt. I was like, “What’s this good for?
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