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is twitter changing your blogging habits? – A 2008 response
Yes and no. Twitter is replacing instant messaging and chatrooms. It’s an open method by which for people to communicate instantly with others. It’s also about the overheard conversation although that term has disappeared.
What does “overheard†mean? Well simply that whenever two people discuss a topic hundreds of people are following this conversation and when they decide they have an opinion they can cut in. They do have that 140 character limit though, so they need to get to the point is efficiently as possible.
When that isn’t possible then they can do the next best thing. Write a comment in a blog post or even write a blog entry of their own where the conversation that took place on twitter is synthesised into a more digestible chunk of information.
As a result twitter is changing people’s blogging habits but the question is why people want to chat publicly rather than in an enclosed space. Today people like transparency.
The Feedly and Friendfeed way of doing things
Venture capitalists love to invest in something that works, something that’s concrete. If it’s got a 900% user growth rate overall and tripled in size in the UK alone then this is excellent. That’s the perfect website to invest in. Of course I’m speaking here of twitter. The 140 character twitter website that no one has time to use yet everyone flocks to. With the recent twestival you see that it’s gone local, and that can only mean one thing, that it’s gone mainstream. Perfect, now the web celebs can come in without looking too geeky. Cue Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry to name just two individuals.
It’s passed though. The golden age of twitter is behind us. 140 characters and social presence have moved on from there and I think the companies we should be focusing next are feedly. friendfeed and google reader. The reason for this is simple. We all love to create content and we all love to talk about it. We all love to show others that we’ve found something but the drawback is that we create a lot of duplicates. These duplicates aren’t bad if you’re only following five or six friends. When you follow twenty eight thousand though it does start to get tedious however.
That’s where I feel real enthusiasm for feedly. As you go from blog to blog you find a lot of content that’s interesting but aside from what’s written in the comments for each post you have no idea of what others have thought or said about this. Feedly gives you a small box at the bottom right corner that tells you the number of conversations that have taken place and a quick method by which to see which are the most active references to this post. As a result you don’t need to wait for the kettle to boil to start a conversation. It’s already there.
That boiled kettle of course is Friendfeed. That’s where people will be moving next. That’s where we will find the conversation moving next. Watch the realtime thread and you can see who liked the post, who was vocal about it and when the most recent comment comes in. What this implies is that the limitations felt by twitter will become a thing of the past. We’ve got a high end solution for our content needs.
Of course we’re individuals. We all like to have our own rss feeds and personal content and that’s where google reader integration comes in. At the start and end of the day, when all those we are following are taking care of their children or walking their dogs we can go hunting for original content. We share that content and once people wake up they can comment and so the cycle continues.
Other websites are now providing more interesting options and deserve at least part of that pie.
Jumping On and Off Twitter
There are two types of Twitter users. Those that are still using it daily, and angry with what Musk is doing, and those that quit weeks ago, and come back every now and then to see how things have changed, or stayed the same. I am surprised that to some degree the site feels the same and yet, of course, it isn’t.
I am surprised to see who stayed around, who is still using the site, and whether the community feels lively, or dead. It’s both alive and dead. It is Schrodinger’s cat. It is still alive and filled with news about how the COVID pandemic is not over. People who know the pandemic is not over have stuck around on Twitter.
Disengaged
When I go to Twitter now I do so as a tourist, rather than a local. I gave up on Twitter weeks ago. Now whether it goes down or not, will not change my daily routine. If it goes down tomorrow I will already have a replacement in place. I don’t know what it is, but I am less invested in Twitter. I know that its days are numbered.
Disliking the Fediverse
One of the biggest strengths of the Fediverse is that it’s distributed and we can integrate our blogs straight into peoples feeds if we feel like doing that. The drawback to the Fediverse is that it is a young community of strangers trying to impose their views of the world on others, rather than just having conversations. People are fighting for human rights, but I don’t mean in a positive way. They’re trying to convert and indoctrinate people into thinking their way, rather than reasoning, and building empathy. This turns me off of using the Fediverse.
The Unfamiliar
As I said yesterday, Twitter is a network where we have been friends with certain users for over a decade, and met them in person multiple times. On the Fediverse we have yet to spend years getting to know each other and building strong links. WE’re strangers, and we’re still looking for a community to become part of.
It is paradoxical that whilst social media is huge, communities are scattered and hard to find, so it’s hard to find a group that we want to commit too.
The Slow Timeline
Although this could sound like an empty problem, one of the issues with the fediverse is that I am following people, but I can often refresh the timeline for minutes or hours at a time, without seeing new posts. The Fediverse is still quiet, if you don’t find active people to follow. You can’t doom scroll, for the simple reason that the timeline doesn’t refresh permanently, like it does on Twitter.
The Clear Benefit
Although Twitter and the Fediverse being less engaging might sound like a bad thing, it isn’t. When social media is a constant distraction it becomes easy to spend hours a day being distracted. Now that social media is less sticky, we can get back into the habit of completing things, even without a fast approaching deadline. We have time to blog, to read, to watch tv, and more. Social media, as a personal life, is a thing of the past, for now, until new communities form.
And Finally
One of the strongest features of the Fediverse is that writing blog posts has become akin to social media, because blog posts can either be shared as blog posts that people have to click through to read, or they can be posted natively, within the Fediverse. Although I am writing this blog post now, it is fully integrated to the Fediverse, and thus, part of the conversation. Now if we want to be visible, we have to integrate ourselves within the Fediverse. We don’t need to wait for search engines and so on to index our site. We wait for people to repost, and comment.
The social media Living Room
Yesterday afternoon I dropped by Nik’s house, (Loudmouthman) for what would be the first Social Media Living room event. The idea is simple. Participants of Social Media, whether through Twitter, Seesmic and other networks meet in the physical world to have nice conversations.
Quite a few people turned up including Fred2baro, Danacea, Mark Harrison, Jason Jarrett and one or two other individuals. we talked about tech and about life. The point is that to create a podcamp takes too much time and there is a need for more frequent smaller events. This was a perfect opportunity.
Among the amusing features of last night was the recording of a seesmic post via three laptops, three accounts and three webcams. We joked about which camera to look into and it was yet another example of taking Social Media friendships into the physical world.
No more complaining that spending time online means meeting fewer people. It doesn’t. I’m looking forward to more such events.
Twhirl as your Twitter interface
For those of you familiar with twitter there are a number of ways of keeping up with information and my current favourite is Twhirl. What I love about using Twhirl is how well it works.
At first it feels clunky. You’ve got to download adobe air, then you’ve got to download twhirl and once this is done you’ve got to get used to the user interface. I went from twitterific to here and the transition was relatively painless. I missed one or two of the keyboard shortcuts.
Since then I’ve grown to enjoy using it for three key reasons. The first of these is that you don’t need to restart it as there are no caching issues. For someone who tweets as much as I do and follows as many a lot of time would be sent reseting twitterific. Not with Twhirl. It’s got over 5500 tweets right now and no sign of slowing down.
The second feature i love is how you can choose whether to @, DM, Favourite or re-tweet. Anyone using twitter is familiar with the first three. The re-tweet feature is fun. It allows you to retweet verbatim quite easily. I don’t see it used often luckily but it’s a nice gimmik.
The third feature that I enjoy are the shortcut keys specific to this program. R for replies, F for friends, D for direct messages and then there are two or three other such short cuts that could be of interest.
As an aside you’ve got the filter option although having not used it I can’t comment. It’s a nice package and anyone using Aero should give it a try.
As featured on Operator 11
After a long but great day of work I came home to do The Twitter Vox show with Loudmouthman and two guests. We were joined by Goldie Katsu and Malburns. We discussed what it’s like to reach 3000 tweets and the conversation moved towards the advantages of using twitter when part of global communities like Second Life. We had some interesting insights and the conversation progressed well. It’s a good show and can be found here.
additionaly the show was featured on the front page of operator 11.