Twitter, take four
This ad will vanish when you reload.
After seeing how chum Jo uses it I think I’ve finally clicked as to what Twitter could be used for. It’s not so much for “status updates” ala Facebook, though that’s the basic model. It’s more for calls out to the network in the hope that someone out there might connect, but if they don’t it’s no big deal.
The trick is to understand this when (ahem) Twittering. A stream of you-specific items that elicit nothing more than an “uh-huh” is pointless, unless you-specific stuff is really fascinating. What’s better is items that others can latch onto. “I’m thinking about this”, “I’m working on this”. Moving, if you like, from meatspace to ideaspace.
The purpose of all this? When people see what you’re thinking about they might also be thinking about the same thing .They might, then, get in touch about it, helping both of you to get to grips with the notion. Or they might just remember that’s something you’re interested in and, next time you meet, get talking about it.
Of course Twitter, being a platform, is “for” many other things, but I suspect this one might actually be useful. We’ll see.
My Twittering, it be here and on the sidebar. Twitbin be how I be interacting with the service.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
RSS feed
Email
Twitter
Flickr
Facebook
Last.FM
LJ feed
Pete Pipe
I’m more your Facebook updates kind of guy when I use Twitter. You may have noticed. In fact, my line is that Twitter IS Facebook, but with all the useless crap stripped away. The updates are the important bit.
And so to me, it’s more about building a better picture of the people that you thought you knew - so that there are far more hooks on which to hang the next real conversation you have face to face. Trivia, certainly - but it’s in the small details that we build up the rounded picture of characters in these sorts of narratives.
Of course, irrelevant witterings about what you put on your toast and auto-reposted RSS feeds annoy me - but ‘I’m out shopping for a new hedge trimmer’ and ‘I’m heading to Jibbering Records for a coffee’ seem just as good (and useful) Twitter-fare as ‘I’m thinking about the spacetime continuum - can someone explain relativity?’.
I’m a convert - and the more people I know use it, the happier I become.
I think I’m getting close to some, if you like, Platonic forms that define how these inherently social things are used.
Sharing is the big thing. Jo’s sharing the news gathering process and enlarging her pool of sources. I’m sharing my thought processes in the hope that others will help me refine them (and in turn refine theirs). You’re talking about sharing personality and building reputation.
This leads into Benefit. There has to be a benefit to both the writer and reader (or content provider / consumer if you prefer). When following someone there has to be a reason otherwise it’s just ploughing through noise without results. Similarly there has to be a motivation for me to contribute my ideas and, however small, time. For example, people ask me “why should I blog” or get worried when they don’t have the motivation to blog. I guess the answer there is don’t blog if there’s no tangible benefit to you.
There’s more. Something using the phrase “intangible” or “vague” I think. A metaphor involving soup perhaps?
Oh yeah - the tricky thing, as I see it, is when these reasons don’t quite mesh. I find the notion of conversations across Twitter streams to be incredibly irritating. Conversations should take place in more suitable venues I feel. But then I’m not using it as a text messaging system. Am I wrong?
Flickr quite famously refused to bow to user requests that went against the spirit of the service (photos only, everyone has the same layout, order of photostream not editable, etc). This strengthened the service and when they did let people change the layouts of their pages I felt it a bad thing. But even with Flickr I find I’m increasingly using it “wrongly” compared to the rest of the community, and I was there from the near beginning. Am I wrong?
Sure, within your own network this isn’t a problem as you’ve evolve your own rules of engagement. The trick comes in the overlap, something social networks are supposed to excel at.
Maybe it’s another form of language?
Is it another form of language, or just another space for language to be used in?
Cool post though, really got me thinking about it. I think I agree with you that you’ve got to be able to get something from the feed.
Andrew has a rather interesting life, meeting people in the music industry, so I would subscribe to a feed which gives an update of what he’s up to.
Sending out info about stories is pissing into the wind to some extent, but it is a useful way of broadcasting what I’m up to… just in case.
But I HATE people who use it to notify you that they’ve written a blog post. If I’m following you on Twitter, I will probably know about your blog and will have subscribed. I’ll read it in my own time, thanks.
Or does it change the way language is used by the nature of context? Maybe context is the thing here? I certainly feel that all my different blogs let em write in different ways…
Syndicating feeds into things like Twitter bugs me too. I notice Paul Bradshaw does that though to his credit he doesn’t seem to put anything new out through Twitter. This seems to happen with Tumblr a fair bit - people adding new stuff to their Tumblr while also mixing in content from their blogs, Flickr streams, del.icio.us, etc. It’s most annoying as it means I get the same stuff two or three times in my reader and I can’t unsub from the Twitter / Tumblr feed for fear of missing other stuff.
I’m of the opinion mashing up of feeds should be done by the user, not the provider. (Yes, I have a Yahoo pipe but it’s demonstrative rather than replacing anything.)
Oooh yes. Auto pushing feeds of blog posts to Tumblr annoys me greatly.
I got notified about this blog post via your twitter feed Pete. Oh the ironing…
Come now, Tom. There’s a difference between automatically syndicating every post to Twitter and selectively drawing attention to specific posts.
Pete don’t iron.
Only joshing! Personally I use twitter for a bit of both, more as a Facebook-style status update than anything elso though, just to add a bit more updated-ness to my blog, and a way of putting trivial things on there that don’t deserve a full post.
But it’s nice to know it’s there if anything crops up that needs a quick appeal to the internet the options there.
The other idea was just to provide a running commentary on any breaking news I’m covering if and when it happens - more like you’d imagine journalists would use it.
Either way, I’m not sure it needs to be decided what it’s “best” used for, that’s why it’s so great, and so popular, it’s very versatile.
Coupla things be occuring to my jetlagged mind.
Firstly, it’s not that I’m defining the best use, more that by being all strict and restrictive I’m making it useful for me. If I can say “this is what it’s for” then I’m more likely to use it. Useful lesson for teh blogzors evangelism.
Secondly, going back to Dubber’s first comment - “Twitter IS Facebook, but with all the useless crap stripped away” - I think the useless crap isn’t so useless. But yeah, it is crap. People define Facebook on their own terms. Some use it for stupid stuff, I use it for events. Pretty much everyone uses the status but hardly anyone would use it JUST for the status. Y’get me? This is the issue I had with Twitter. Sure, the thinking goes, I can see it being useful but unless it’s part of my daily routine then I’m not going to bother.