WebGuild’s Guide to Twitter
What? You are not Tweeting like a twittering maniac? Daya at WebGuild has a nice feature – a guide to Twitter and how to set up and use the messaging and “microblogging” service that has taken the tech world by storm. In fact Twitter is now as important to many tech folks as blogging because I think it has connected people in a fast, fun, and informal way as well as allow links to blog posts which have more substance. Although I still prefer blogs because I think they offer more thoughtful, detailed information, Twitter is a far better people connector, allowing people to keep in touch with friends, allowing thousands to “eavesdrop” on conversations, and allowing everybody to participate actively with tech movers and shakers.
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I’ve viewed Twitter as a “lifestyle mode” wherein teenage girls constantly talk about what is happening in their lives. Ofcourse, it may at first be entertaining but after a while no one really cares much about their travels and activities, so having a blow by blow account of which club they went to, what movie they are about to see, what airplane they are about to catch, etc. really isn’t of much use to anyone. “Doing laundry” is not much of a thrilling tweet and ‘Doing Whites’ followed by ‘now doing Colors’ is not really helpful to anyone.
The 140 character limit is good. Ideally we would prefer a way of making emails to be brief and directly relevant to the subject heading. Instead Twitter gives us “emails” that are so short that we don’t much care about subject headings. A Twitter of “stuck at O’Hare, boneing up on LISP programming” is all that is needed.
Is there any way to Twitter to subject recipients rather than social recipients? In other words, can someone ‘tweet’ about a spark plug problem and only have it received by auto mechanics or their friends who are auto mechanics?
Eventually girls graduate from high school and eventually they leave the college dorm … and their communication styles change as they announce they won’t be bothering to allow you to follow their tweets and twitterings anymore.
Twitter will have to adapt by focusing on subject matter tweets.
Note: As might be obvious from this post: I ain’t never twittered.
After reading some of that guide to Twitter, I see it is possible to select twitters based on content though not necessarily based on subject matter: “Going to the Horseshoe bar” sent by someone in San Francisco would be picked up by other San Francisco residents but also by blacksmiths in Kansas and bar patrons near the Toronto Horsehoe Bar.
Well, 140 character limit is a good thing, but who would really want this stuff crammed down their cell phone?
More on Twittering/Tweeting/etc…
I wonder what happens when some poker player twitters about “dead guys” meaning married men who are allowed out one night a week with twenty bucks and someone listening to all those twitters is a necrophiliac? Or someone uses the term “double fisting” meaning imbibing from drinks being carried in each hand yet someone listening to all those twittering tweets considers fisting to be a sexual act.
Is Twitter’s 140 character limitation going to cause some problems? Information overload is bad enough but will be dealing with “Trivia Overload”?