twitter… eh?
Now I have been on twitter for about a year now… and must say for that first year was not very active. But have in the last 2 months “re-found” it and have started to become active in the space. So thought it was time for a blog entry about it.
So quick rewrap for those of you who don’t know what it is. Put simply it is a 140 Character limited Blog Post that everyone can read. You can write, read, private message people via your phone(sms), your computer or basically any IP device that you want. I have heard it described as a world wide cocktail party where you listen to bits of the conversation halfway through out of context. And yet at the same time if you listen carefully to the noise you can hear a number of distinct voices, threads, and opinions coming through.
A quick Google for Twitter and the recent Chinese earthquake can show you the power that this (and similar) social media tools can have. In fact with a couple of key people/news sources that I follow I get most of the big important news faster than any wire service (I have access through work to most of them) and certainly faster than any media organisation in the world. Blogging tools and the WWW have up until this point required access to the web to share and disseminate information, yet now anyone with a mobile phone who can send a text can share information with a huge global community instantaneously.
However, it is not without it problems. For the last week it has been stable, but it certainly is suffering from sever growing pains and can still at times be frustrating in its outages. But then it reminds me of when I was running my BBS. Waiting 12 hours for the next fido-mail package seemed at eternity. Now if Twitter is down for an hour or less people around the world start freaking out. (Me included). Yet and despite all of its problems it seems to be growing.
Is it more than just a series of random conversations for me? YES. Already I have found out from the people that I follow and engage with information that I would have not found out in any other means. In some respects Twitter at the moment is the smoker’s corner. All the smokers are going out for a quick twit, sharing info and then back to their desks for real work. Those in the smokers group are sharing knowledge outside the normal business and social framework. Much as the smokers of old would.
You will notice that my twitter feed is on the side of the blog on every page. I decided to make my timeline public and the rewards are immense. Yes it will take a while to work out who to follow, who not to and even what tools to use (such is it flexibility). But once you engage and you do need too engage, Twitter can be as far removed from the passive mediums such as newspaper and television as you can get with out a brain chip. If you want it to be. And you will want it to, then and only then will you be able to see its potential and what you can offer the global conversation.
and here is the boss of twitter talking about it.
Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter from biz stone on Vimeo.
