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Twitter as a way of life

Byrichard

Twitter is not a social network, rather it’s a way of life. The more you use Twitter the further it gets into your way of life. It allows you to follow current affairs, geek out about social media and keep in touch with friends that uses the social network. What’s more it’s a network that does not require any specific device.

At first it’s a confusing place. Look at the public timeline and it’s a torrent of junk and sifting through it will take hours a day. As you spend more time on twitter though you find people of interest to follow. In some cases it’s friends from the physical world, in other cases friends from other websites on the web and then more.

In reality what makes twitter interesting, and part of what makes people use it is how efficient it is at getting a message across. You’ve got 140 characters to express yourself. In Paris I was told I speak in 140 characters or less. That’s not a bad thing. In fact it’s good. It’s about the continual flow of information.

Imagine you’re swimming down a river but everytime you move to stay afloat you have to close your eyes. That’s what article and blog reading is. As you focus on one task so your ability to focus on anything else dissapears. That’s fine in the old media where pages are static and where airwaves are limited.

In the modern world though it is necessary to absorb many sources of information at once. How many of you have your ipod, laptop and mobile phone with you at the time you’re reading this post? I’m sure most. How many of you have more podcasts than you can view or listen to? How many of you have more programs recorded on PVR than you can watch?

That’s why twitter is a lifestyle. It’s about constantly looking for information and building an understanding of current affairs through constantly taking in little bits of information. Stop talking about the social media on twitter, rather start talking about the good old fashioned time efficient soundbyte. Want to be heard. Don’t take people’s time. Encourage interest instead.

Many people are complaining about the decentralised conversation, the notion that blogs are no longer the center of attention, that twitter, friendfeed, facebook and others are killing the conversation. In fact quite the opposite is true. If you’re in New York you’ve got one set of people, if you’re in London you’ve got another. if you’re in Geneva you don’t have much… To have a decentralised conversation means that many ideas can be explored at once and as pillars of the online community meet at various events so the conversations can once more converge.

Don’t worry about comments on a blog, think about the conversations and the people you’re having them with. That’s where the fun is to be had.

Twitter’s broken again

Byrichard

Yes, it’s happened yet again, twitter is broken again but in an entirely new way. At first it appeared that twitter had crashed in the old way, that is to say no server response. This time is different though. We’ve got the WML website version showing. The mobile version is now on the web version.

Twitter's broken again

Does this mean we’ll see the replies tab on twitter mobile? I really hope so. I want to see how people respond, no point in tweeting if you’re not listening.

Thanks twitter, for finding yet another interesting way in which to break.

—update— nothing broke, same crap mobile interface as always.

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Quotably following Conversations on twitter

Byrichard

Quotably is a new service that allows you to easily follow people’s conversations by typing in their username. It displays the most recent conversations and shows the original post as well as the discussions that have occured as a result. It appears to work by taking the most recent @ reply from one person to another and displaying.

Here are a few examples:

Warzabidul

Jeff Pulver

Fred2baro

These are examples where you can see a lot of conversation because these users are active in their responses with those following them. Take a look at certain people’s threads and you see that there’s an initial post but no response to the response. It’s quite funny to observe.

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The twitter colour wars and sheep mentality

Byrichard

As if zombie slaying, vampire biting and sheep throwing weren’t enough the facebook lunacy has reached Twitter via Zefrank and the stupid colour wars. As if the conversation was not interesting and fulfilling enough for twitter users there is now a movement to create a colour war encouraging people to split into groups.

I dislike this movement for a number of reasons. For a start it’s a complete waste of time because it does not require people to do anything in the physical world. Just change your avatar and you’ve participated. That’s similar to the zombie wars.

As a second point it’s encouraging people to break into smaller clusters and groups, which although fun in certain situations where groups are too big is pointless on twitter. In particular I saw that for one colour the point was not to tweet but rather be tweeted at. Now why would you ask for people to remain silent when the whole reason behind twitter is status updates, firstly and conversations as a side effect of the first.

When few people used hotmail it was clean and e-mails were worth reading but as chain letters arrived so the usability went down. When geocities became popular so pages became flooded with junk, same with myspace and later facebook. I really don’t want to see this junk making its way into the twitter stream. I spend too much time there to appreciate it.

That’s why I won’t participate.

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Did I mention I’m up to twenty thousand tweets

Byrichard

Did I mention that I got all the way up to twenty thousand tweets last night? I’m officially a very heavy user of twitter and many people celebrated the event with me in true twitter style. They @ed me. It’s not everyday you get to that number. I also seesmiced a few thoughts about twitter which someone can find and link to in the near future. I’m feeling a little lazy in that regard.

Also today was my first proper full day of work and it went well. I’m tired as a result and tomorrow should be more fun. See you then.

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Twitter – Forget individuals, follow their community instead

Byrichard

For you to understand what people are talking about on twitter there is one thing you should know. When you follow Dacort, Loudmouthman, loic Lemeur, Jeff Pulver or many other people including me you’ve got to follow those that they are talking to as well as those that are listening. By this I mean that twitter is not about individuals so much as community.

If I spend the morning speaking to the English community then there are many names that will appear again and again. In so doin you’re going to be curious to see who’s on the other end. As a result of this you may decide to follow one person, then another and it continues. Over a period of days you may start following a dozen or more, people, maybe even hundreds.

As two people follow two others so the six degrees of seperation comes into force. I have links into the London, Geneva and Paris community for example (in terms of face to face meetings) and many more people via online conversations. What this means is simple. If you follow the right core f people you’ve got easy access to some influential people. In fact you may be one of them without realising it.

If twitter is simply about what you’re up to then that’s quite a restricted way of using twitter. To get the most out of twitter you have to find a good community and add it’s members. In so doing you can participate in some really interesting conversations. I’m within the social media conversation at the moment but over time as more groups participate so the conversation should be tailored to your needs. If you see someone @ another member see whether you can add that person too. Twitter is about the community, not individuals.

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The twitter back channels

Byrichard

Twitter is one of those places that takes some time to get the hang of but once you do it’s going to suck you in and won’t spit you out till you’re exhausted. It’s a little bit like seesmic except that in this case you don’t look like you’re so in love with your computer that you’re talking to it.

In reality twitter is just the surface of our interaction with the groups of friends we have met and made through this network. Twitter is first and foremost about short messages to say what you’re doing right now. Over time though it’s become much more. As more and more people started to use it so the want to comment on what people are doing increased. Overtime as more and more comments were made so conversations occured. These conversations are a little more complex than you may think. Initially conversations via instant messaging services like ICQ, Skype, Yahoo and others are about one to one communication. Twitter is about the overheard conversation. In other words as I’m talking to one person another person overhears what I’m saying and they want to join. Over time a community forms. Some call it the twitterverse, others the twittosphere, and some call us the twitterati. The result is the same.

It’s a community of people based around twitter. They are for the most part involved in the social media although a growing number of people are “tourists”, in other words they’re looking at this social networking system or tool and seeing how they can apply it to their own lives and business practices.

There’s another dimension. The invisible conversations that are taking place. With some people I have exchanged hundreds of messages in private, via direct messages. With other people it’s via google talk and in other cases via the skype chatrooms. In other words it’s a dynamic conversation across a number of instant messaging services. There are a number of uses. In some cases some conversations are too personal to have out in the open, with others the conversations are very focused and the community is a community through a skype chatroom or conference call. As a result there is a strong feel of belonging within certain communities.

Seesmic is one website and over time a community that has profited greatly from twitter, and I mean in terms of the members of the community rather than the wealth generated. As people created videos so a link with the video title would appear. As the “Seesmic” tag appeared more and more so a buzz was generated to create interest. As more people were invited through friends using twitter so more interest grew. It was also a two channel conversation. One channel being twitter where short messages could be exchanged easily and the second channel video where opinions could be exchanged through visual means. Quite a few parties took place then.

Many questions are also asked by those that use twitter. Some of these questions are easy to answer within 140 characters and a list of responses is left as a blog entry. It’s a quick method of getting a number of points of view efficiently. Occasionaly entire conversations come to life about a number of topics and multiple people talk to multiple people and after three or four hours results and conclusions are drawn up and a comprehensive blog post covering a range of issues can be written up.

Twitter is a simple way of keeping in touch with what friends are doing but it also creates links with people we would find very hard to get hold of using more contemporary methods such as facebook, e-mails and other. This is a glimpse of what the future of communication will hold. Skype, seesmic, gtalk, facebook are all there to add depth to the twitter conversations.

Twitterpod – archiving your tweets

Byrichard

Over the past three days I’ve been testing twitterpod and so far I’m quite happy with it. It’s an efficient way of keeping track of twitter conversation. What makes this application different from others is the way it archives all tweets you’ve received. Three days Over the past three days I’ve received over 8400 tweets and i can search through them to see my conversation history with all those I follow.

Another feature I like is the drawer feature that comes out when I browse over a tweet that has a hyperlink. The drawer

The Drawer is great because you don’t need to go from one application to another in order to view the hyperlinks. Simly scroll down the list of tweets and find the relevant links. If the link is worth visiting properly then you can view it in another browser window. It’s effortless and that’s why I love the feature.

button

Another feature that’s useful is the way you can choose to see all tweets, only those tweets that are related to you(me) and all tweets with URLs, in other words hyperlinks.

There are some keyboard shortcuts like apple 2 to send an @message and apple 3 to open the person’s profile page in browser.

The final thing is more of a gimmik. if you’re just watching twitter without contributing many comments or adding to the conversation then the visualisation tool allows you to have twitter running as a screensaver of sorts. I don’t see the appeal but some people might.

sample graphic

Overall it’s a nice little package and so far it’s been able to cope with my tweeting style which is always an advantage. I’ll continue using this for the moment.

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Twitter100 – 100 at a glance

Byrichard

If you don’t have much time to see what everyone is doing then twitter100 is a really interesting option. It allows you to see what up to 100 people you’re following are doing at that moment in time. It allows you to see who you’d like to respond to. It’s easy to use, all you need is your user name.

Twitter100

As you see the layout is good when you don’t use the full 140 characters. It displays better when not in full screen at full resolution.

It’s not something I’d use all the time