My Conversations With The Ether
Twitter surprised me. There’s nothing dull about talking to no-one in particular, that no-one most often being the ether. Contrary to my initial assumption, tweeting is not about the odd fascination with exposing oneself. Well, maybe it is, but something much less tangible keeps people there. Twitter is a new way of being “in the loop”, almost literally. There’s a certain feeling that your banter will be picked up by people, even if it’s limited to groggy “Hello Coffee” morning-chatter.
More importantly, there’s a very odd opportunity for to-the-point conversations, unlike email and soon instant messaging. Email came and went, bogged down by a harsh mistress called spam. Instant messaging hasn’t quite left the stage yet, but being logged on indefinately feels like being on-the-phone all day, an unsettling sensation. Twitter hits a hidden sweetspot between the two: it tickles the urge to being in the know; it’s not bogged by spam (yet) and it doesn’t insist upon itself like your favourite IM app does. Probably most usefully, Twitter allows people to get in touch with you in an unintrusive way and forces them to be concise: write me 140 characters or don’t write me at all. It’s email without the suck.
I see a corporate use for Twitter. As I’ve learned from studying scrum, textual is the worst form of communication. Mostly I find that people have a hard time getting off their asses and actually doing the writing, but when they finally do, they write way too much1. While I do see the occasional need for emails longer than 140 characters, I also marvel at the delightful brevity of tweets. Perhaps Twitter and corporate communication are starcrossed lovers; perhaps they just haven’t met yet. I am sure they’d be great lovers.
Hey you! With the turtleneck and square black Buddy Holly glasses! You wanted to know how to streamline your web/advertising company for that report you’re doing? Jot this down: quick, brief, simple communication — good.
- On more than one occasion I’ve had the distinct unpleasure of working with people who think the more work gets done the more emails are sent. ↑
It’s frustrating just how hard it is to convince someone that Twitter is worth their time… Well, worth my time actually, since I’m the one who benefits from them twittering. But then, when something like feeds is lost on them, what can you do?
Well, you managed to convince me to join twitter. (http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2008/01/02/10-reasons-you-should-read-this-entry/ Last paragraph).
But yeah, I see what you mean. I do think, however, that Facebook (which I heartily dislike) brings — to my understanding — a subset of what twitter does to the masses. It just lacks some of the sobriety.
The real question is: the people you can’t convince… would it really be nice if they twittered?
It’s funny that there’s such a love-hate relationship in the web dev world with Facebook. Now I have a Facebook account, and I use it for keeping up with the less web-savvy branch of the people I know or have known. And for that, it’s great. It’s the ambient intimacy concept, much like Twitter, only much more so.
Yeah, it would I think. I like to know what they’re up to. A few of them post photos on flickr, so that’s one stream to hook into, but Twitter just allows for more personal details to slip through, and those are the things that keep the pilot-light on a relationship going.
You know, I’d love to know how my friend Bjørn in England is doing with his child; but he’s busy, I’m busy, and between us we almost never align. But with something like Twitter, he could tell me just how much he hates (or likes) changing diapers. And strangely, that would be valuable information to me :).
And Twitter is good that way, exactly because it’s a lightweight Facebook in a sense; it doesn’t require a lot of time to maintain.
I can’t agree enough.
Excellent post, excellent title, excellent comments (except this one).
I guess that makes sense. But while I’m impressed with Twitter, and agree that delish personal details seep through, it’s still a pretty nerdy concept. Simply explaining Twitter, I think, is the biggest problem. Facebook, on the other hand, is un-nerdy in the same way Hotmail is.
Perhaps what I just said is baloney. Perhaps Twitter is simply ahead of its time.
That’s certainly what appealed to me.
Thanks a lot. Wow, I should have run a spellcheck on it, though. Re-reading I found several blunders, including commucation! Apologies for any feedreaders thinking there’s new stuff.
I found that my twitter experience got worse when following lots of people. So I’ve cut down to about 13 and seems to be a lot better.
As a corporate communication practitioner my job is “… delivering a continuous stream of useless bits of…” (to use your phrase) verbiage that no-one reads or cares about. Corporate Communication? What’s that about? Well, it’s about management pretending… (etc)
I’ve heard about this thing called Twitter but to date the name itself has been more than enough to prevent me investigating further. (”twitter”–a stream of high pitched repetitive meaningless noise from bird-brained ‘people’ [?] with nothing better to do than mouth off at each other.)
But having read your post I decided to give it a go. Now that I’ve given it a go, I have to say I don’t get it. I think my previous irrational prejudice was right smack bang on the money.
Anyway, thanks for prodding me into trying it out.
Cool blog by the way.