How do you eat your Twitter?
February 5, 2008 //
Twitter is where I:
- Scrape all the news that’s relevant to me, without having to read a blog or even glance my RSS Feed. This covers news about stuff which happens offline as well as online. I heard about the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! before most, whilst the bad news included the death of actors.
- Solicit opinion from an audience of people I trust thereby reducing my dependence on search engines. This has included asking for information on open WiFi hot spots in Dublin, to asking for the phone number of someone with whom I had a meeting with in London.
- Learn about new initiatives and events
- Learn who’s going to be where and when
- Highlight where I’m going to be in case people want to meet up with me
- Inform people of events I’m attending or hosting
- Promote specific blog posts that I’ve written
- Answer questions to help others in the community
- Meet new people
- Strengthen relationships with people I already know, and with those I’ve met through Twitter
However, as Rob Loch pointed out on one of my previous posts, it’s difficult to see how Twitter will gain mass adoption. I’d like to add that it’s difficult to see how Twitter could gain mass adoption in its current form.
I can’t ever see my parents using Twitter for example. Yet they send picture and video messages. If however, Twitter was bought and used as an engine it could be a different matter.
So, when you open your address book on a mobile, you’d find out where your contacts are and what they’re doing. This would enable us to create communities around our address books seamlessly.
If you don’t use Twitter, why not give it a try. You need to sign up and communicate with friends before you can make an informed decision though.
How do you eat your Twitter?
ian hayward says 
cheryl says 
BankCardUSA says 
Stephanie says 
S’funny - I stumbled into micro-blogging through Jaiku and didn’t go anywhere near Twitter for ages.
I must say that I use Twitter in very similar ways to yourself, however I think my usage (and everyone else’s) has changed somewhat with the advent of the ‘@username’ response phenomenon, (which was a bi-product of Jaiku conversations?), making responses, replies and conversations in general in the twitterverse 100% more compelling.
For example, I only follow you now thanks to seeing what @josiefraser had to say to you. I wanted to see what was provoking her tweets and I also wanted to know what you had to say…. ie: Be included in the conversation.
Someone asked me recently (being a heavy Jaiku user) ‘How do you decide what to post where?’ - s’weird. I don’t know to be honest. I know I have difference audiences in each… and it really does depend on the content/context.
Shame the bloody thing keeps going down eh?
February 5th, 2008
I think mass adoption of services like Twitter will have to wait until a time when data-plans on mobile phones are near ubiquitous.
Unlike email, RSS or social networks, where you can log-in and check new messages every few days to a week or so,
Twitter ’streams’ seem much more transient to me. It’s what’s happening *right now* or it just doesn’t matter… and if you’re not connected regularly enough to follow the stream in real-time, you might as well not bother.
Until that day when "mobile Internet" is just another taken-for-granted feature of the mobile phone, Twitter et al. will remain too geeky for most.
February 5th, 2008
I don’t see that the flat-rate data problem applies to this problem given the sms-based nature of the Tweets…
S’weird - all it takes is one influencer. Discovered recently a bunch of non-geeky, ‘normob’ friends of mine were ALL on Twitter and used it regularly to liaise things like trips to the pub etc…
I was amazed! But all it took was one of them to read about it (Twitter) in the paper one Sunday and they were away.
It’s not about flat rate data-plans at all, everyone can send an SMS. It is, as ever, about education.
Mass education will lead to mass adoption.
February 5th, 2008
@James I don’t think Twitter evolved as a result of Jaiku. It naturally evolved as people fell into two-way conversations.
For example, in the early days I twittered ‘Twitter is now turning into a conversational tool", to which someone piped up "I think that’s stupid" - to which I replied "You’re conversing with me ;)"
February 5th, 2008
@Paul - Must be me then. I’m pretty the ‘@username’ link and reply format appeared on Jaiku first.
Because not too long after that Twitter implemented the same functionality.
But it’s not about the where and why, it’s about how it has evolved with the ‘@username’ change.
No? I’m sure @mbites wrote about it a while back…
February 5th, 2008
@James - perhaps the @ feature came after Jaiku, but Twitter people like me were using it for two-way conversations long before it was implemented.
February 5th, 2008
That’s the post I was talking about. But cool to see you guys were already using it..
As I said - I’m still reasonably newish to this Twitter malarky - but I’m getting there!
February 6th, 2008
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