Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The Somewhat Inevitable Post About Twitter

The progression usually goes like this: You hear about twitter, someone probably saying something on a blog somewhere, “It’s the next big thing! You simply must join!” and so you go check it out. You think that its deceptively simple interface must hide something. You probably scoffed and mockingly thought, “How stupid. No way am I signing up on that. Why do I care what other people are doing and why on earth would they care about what I’m doing?” Plus, do you really want to sign up for another social networking site? Isn’t your MySpace page enough?

In a fit of pique, you sign up. After all, everyone else you know on the IntarWebs is doing it. And being late to the game is icky in this Web 2.0 world, after all. Your first post is probably something along the lines of, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is so stupid. But, oh well, here I am.”

Then you download an app for your Mac or Windows box so you don’t have to log into the site in order to “tweet.” And you still can’t believe that you say things like “saw your tweet!” but you soldier on.

You change your mobile phone plan to include unlimited text messages, so you’ll never miss a “tweet” from one of your new found friends. And so you can post from ANYWHERE, thanks to your fancy pants text messaging phone.

Then you dig into your blog code and paste in the “status badge” twitter code.

Finally, you write a blog post about twitter and the jig is up and it’s all pretty much over. You are done for. Just pack it in.

Anyway…

So a couple months ago, I signed up for twitter and let me tell you, I’ve been through all those phases. (Except the part about changing the message plan on my phone. Already had that. And the status javascript is my code, but currently it’s commented out and lurking in the darkness.)

And here’s the thing about twitter:

It’s fun, but it is earth-shattering and all important? No, not so much. Feels a lot like IRC circa 1995, but you get to choose who you listen to. Will I still be on twitter in a year? Kind of doubt it, but maybe. It entertains me, but I’m pretty easily entertained, after all.

If you are at all curious, go ahead and sign up. It’s totally free to use via the web or IM. (And if you don’t have unlimited messages on your phone plan, stay the hell away from getting “tweets” via the phone.) Twitter doesn’t charge you to use the service via text messages, but your cell phone company might rape you. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of difficult to figure out how the folks at twitter will make money in the long run. Perhaps they have something up their sleeve. Jaiku and Dodgeball are similar animals, though twitter seems to be the service that has captured the fascination of a zillion people. And by zillion, I mean that literally. Sometimes twitter is painfully unresponsive, but it’s getting better.

My fascination with it comes from not answering literally the main twitter question, “What are you doing?” And I rarely “follow/befriend” people who answer that question with statements like “making ramen for dinner,” “waiting on line @ Starbucks, “ or “poopin’.” That’s when twitter is “poke a fork in your face” annoying. People who “tweet” literally don’t make my personal cut. I truly believe that almost no one cares about what I’m doing at any given moment and generally I feel the same about everybody else’s activities. So personally, I try not to answer that question, but instead treat it as a bit of a challenge, “What pithy, witty or interesting thing can I say in 140 characters or less?” It’s like micro-blogging, but you are strictly limited by space constraints. Indeed, tumblr, which is essentially micro-blogging personified, even allows you to import your personal twitter RSS feed.

And some people are amazingly witty and funny. These are a few of my favorite “tweets” I’ve seen so far:

Darth Vader (not the real Darth V., but he’s pretty funny)

Goldman

Leah

Alice

Rick

Merlin

Steven Wright (not the *real* S.W., but a quote a day. *awesome*)

(Twitter has a “favorite” function that mostly nobody uses, I don’t think. I kind of do, but I’m goofy like that.)

This is me.

And yes, I know I swore, I wouldn’t write an entry like this, but so it goes.  (Lower right corner of that image).

Jon scribbled this mess on 05/15/07 at 08:08 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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