Twitter is a great idea poorly executed as a result of which I wish there was an alternative. It’s a chatroom that can be used on multiple platform which is what makes it so interesting. The managment however have decided to cancel Api support, or at least throttle it. As a result of this conversation is floundering.
As a result of this action twitter has become notoriously unreliable and people are no longer able to keep up to date with what people are doing quite as easily. This has resulted in many of my favourite tweeters being far more quiet. Others have felt the need to leave the service.
I would love an alternative to help me keep a constant wave of consciousness of what friends are doing. The 140 character model is good. It’s a very efficient way of dealing with information. We’ve got many alternatives but none are conversational yet.
I love the conversations and how you overhear so many things. I would pay for an alternative that has a far more stable track record. Give me that alternative.
I’m disappointed not angry. There’s a really good product there but it’s so badly implemented I’m losing interest in twitter.
Valentine’s day is a day both dreaded and feared by most for two reasons, as a couple because of the pressure you’re under and as a single because you’re single. In the social media though it can be one of the most amusing times. My social media valentine consisted in two parts. The first on twitter and the second a net2meet (From online to offline meeting) with a fellow seesmicer.
The first one was fun thanks to it’s simplictiy. When you write @ username <3 it takes this to mean that you heart the other user. With maggie a fellow seesmicer we filled each other’s timelines as well as that of many others with this electronic sign of affection. It was amusing to see what a good mood it put both Maggie and I in as a result. The pressure Valentine’s day usually puts on people dissipated entirely.
I reached my 17,000th tweet yesterday and I dedicated it to all the girls I have frequently tweeted with. They’re what made valentine’s day so much fun. I love the idea that I have so many conversations on a daily basis. We’re a community based around twitter and our love of new methods of communication. It’s a good community and I’ll spend many more ours there.
The socia media are a fun place to spend some time and this year was one of the most relaxed valentine’s days because technology meant that I had some good friends to have an enjoyable time with. Keep in mind that Valentine’s day is the day I got my driving license so whilst others celebrate love and relationships I celebrate mobility and frienships. Yesterday was a pleasure and I hope next year will be just as good.
With the sentence “Of Twitter threads (Mice) and Blog Posts (Humans)” you’ll see that I’ve done two things. The first is that I’ve modernised a well-known book title to draw parallels with the practices of writing Twitter threads and blog posts.
People write twitter threads because they think that it’s fast, convenient, will draw an audience and it’s trendy. It keeps people within the same site. No browsing between platforms and websites. There is the notion that people do not want to leave the social networks where they find themselves. Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks are portals, except that once you’re inside your trapped.
The beauty of writing threads is that it’s easy. You only need two hundred characters per tweet. You don’t need to develop and justify your ideas as you would with a blog post. Twitter threads are fleeting. Within a few minutes, they’re gone.
Blog posts, in contrast, requires your inspiration to last. You look at that empty window and you see an insurmountable challenge. You see three hundred words as a challenge not worth attempting. That’s how I often feel about blogging, and that’s why I usually write after a day of sports or other activities. It’s easy to write when the story exists and you’re just remembering it.
By blogging rather than writing twitter threads you’re pushing yourself to learn to write. The more you write the more ideas flow, and the more ideas flow the easier it is to go back and edit. The fear of the blank page dissipates, as does the lack of consistent inspiration.
Another feature of writing a blog post rather than a twitter thread is that you have time to think. There are no updates, no “press to refresh” and other distractions. From the moment you start to write until the moment you run out of momentum you are focused.
The length of my blog posts, and the quality of my writing have improved. I’m taking longer and longer breaks from social media. I’m reverting from a distracted individual who doesn’t follow curiousity to one that explores more.
If you’re worried about being distracted then reading twitter threads will not resolve this issue. You read two or three posts in a thread and see a reply that will take you in another direction, before returning to the original stream of thought.
Contrast this to a blog post. If, and when you skim Wordpress and other websites you’re seeing each post and their description before clicking and reading that post for a few minutes. You are fully engaged with the message that the writer wants to share. You then share that post, and people will read it as easily as you did.
If you’re inspired and have something to say then blogging is a fantastic avenue because as you’re learning to write with a voice there is a small audience, and as your voice gets stronger, and as your writing improves, so will your audience. In contrast, writing twitter threads gives the illusion of being a writer. You’re getting the attention, but writing snippets.
There is an exception to that rule, of course, poetry. If you’re a poet, and I am not, then Twitter might be an excellent avenue.
Yesterday someone twittered about tweetgrid, a simple to use web interface that allows you to see, in real time what people are tweeting about. It filters as many key words to chose and dedicates one portion of the screen per word. If you select four words then you can watch as four topics are discussed. if you select just two then you see only two.
The reason this is a useful tool is that it makes trend watching easier. Imagine the new year’s celebration. You could watch as a few people speak about what they’re doing, as they wish you a happy new year.
The point of tweetgrid is that it’s a quick, easy to use interface that you can use from any computer.
This weekend I went on a social media binge. A social media binge is the moment when you forfeit sleep and the rest of reality for a few hours as part of the social media.
For the purpose of this particular challenge I set myself two pass times. The first of these was to twitter and the second was to seesmic. If you read previous posts you’ll find out what twitter. As to seesmic that’s another story. It’s close to being instant messaging with videos.
Normal video chats are live. I talk and as I talk you can respond and interrupt me. In seesmic you talk, type a title and share the video. After that another person speaks, presses stop and posts. Over the period of a few hours many more posts appear and as they do so the conversation evolves exponentially. All of these videos is available to every over member so there is a great degree of overheard conversation. This overheard conversation is where the fun begins.
I’ve seen girls dancing, guys act like zombies, discussions about literature and social media. I’ve seen so many things that it feels like the social media equivalent of a music festival. Watch seesmix clips on youtube to get a better idea.
Snowboarding is a fun and safe sport as long as you know what you’re doing. Occasionally of course we push the limits. A few years ago whilst snowboarding with someone around La Dole we decided that rather than go back down via St Cerque we would snowboard home by passing over the ridge and down the other side. For decades both us had hiked those slopes so we knew them well.
I took one step and felt myself falling. I was face down in the snow and I called to the person I was with to know whether he could see me. He could, so I knew there was no problem. We both strapped our snowboards on and from that point we snowboarded down the slope.
In Verbier a 29 year old Entrepreneur lost his life after falling from a cliff into a rive below, from a few articles I’ve read. The conditions are unclear at the moment. What is clear though is that the people did not have a proper contingency plan or experience of the mountains. If the conditions are adverse the last thing you want to do is go off piste, especially when you’re not with a local guide who knows the mountains.
The reason I’m speaking about this particular story is that these people had some of the latest technology at their disposal. GPS enabled iphones and twitter, as is written in this article. If you’re lost in the mountains with this type of device you can get a geo loc within twenty meters of where you are. You can see a satellite view of where you are and you can see which way would be the best to get home. You can also stay put and let rescuers find you rather than attempt to make it back down. If your GPS location is within 20 meters it’s not that complicated to find two people.
The other reason I’m speaking about this is that some of those who were part of the group were tweeting the adventure. One tweet speaks about the great time they were having and how they “finished the ski day due to complete whiteout”. The next is about the 2 people missing. Screen grabs of the tweets are here.
This demonstrates the weakness of the iphone and the GPS functionality. With my phone whenever I go outdoors the GPS tracks my exact location within 20-60 meters. What this means is that if I go missing within a minute you’ll see exactly where I am if you’ve added me on Google latitude. On that note I’ve invited a few more people to follow me on google latitude. If you have an S60 Symbian phone maybe you could do the same, just as a backup.
It’s a shame it had to happen to anyone, especially since that type of accident is easy to avoid. It’s even more of a shame that Hermioneway, whom I met at LeWeb in Paris is one of those that had to go through the experience. Switzerland is a beautiful country for all those that enjoy outdoors sports and beautiful landscapes so it’s a shame that it’s overshadowed by that event.
Ben Thomspon wrote, “How Facebook Squashed Twitter“. Â The article looks at social networks from a marketing point of view. I like conversational social networks. Social networks by their very name are for conversations. They are about connections and they are about friendship, collaboration and more.Â
In its Golden age twitter was a social network to establish new friendships with people we had yet to meet. It was a great tool, especially in places like London where the community of users was big enough to be interesting. Facebook, on the other hand, was a network of school friends, university friends and eventually colleagues. Facebook was more of an interactive yearbook.
Between 2006-2009, both networks were good because they were about friendly conversations, event organisation and personal sharing. At this time user engagement and stickiness were very high.
Both Twitter and Facebook are losing their appeal. Twitter lost it’s sense of community in 2009 when people went from following friends to following celebrities and when conversations went from being  individual to threaded by hashtags. As the closeness between users faded so did the stickiness of the network.
Return on investment has always been looked at from the point of public relations or marketing because they are the people paying. Their cost is financial and so twitter wanted to keep them happy. They ignored the other cost. Time. Private individuals need to justify giving their time and attention to social networks too. In the early days of twitter, when it was a conversation tool, we could justify spending the entire day on twitter because it allowed us to establish new business contacts, new friendships and more. When attention shifted from conversations and friendships to utilitarianism the network declined in value.
Facebook too is declining but for other reasons. It is a network of friends who are getting married, having children and working hard. They don’t use facebook in the same way as before. Social networks need to re-invent themselves as time progresses. Twitter needs to work on re-creating tight-knit communities and Facebook needs to find ways of making itself relevant to parents and working professionals now that our university lives are behind us, for the most part.
Social Media and Social networks have been around since the birth of civilisation. The difference is that social networks are now online as much as they are offline. Social media have gone from being paintings in caves to being Devo art, memes and other products. Facebook and twitter were great social networks because they helped to assemble communities on the World Wide Web. We are now shifting to regionalisation and interest based networks. I am thinking of Strava, Glocals, Sports Tracker and more.
I stopped using Twitter because I stopped finding conversationalists. Facebook too, is at risk. If they do not make an effort to remain relevant both of them will become dormant networks.
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