Sometimes, I have my reservations towards the latest and trendiest Web 2.0 activities. I’ve never understood, for instance, the Mac program Quicksilver. That’s not to say that I haven’t tried it, or that I don’t understand why some people would like it — I just don’t understand how it benefits me. I’m a visual person, and a qiuck “control-space” brings up Apple’s search program Spotlight.
The newest phenomenon is Twitter, which is basically a web-based version of an away message. What are you doing? Share it with the world.
My first thoughts on Twitter is that it’s…kind of…a little bit…self-indulgent, shall we phrase it nicely. Generally, I don’t care if you’ve just cleaned your baby’s diaper, and further…why are you sharing this with me? However, as Steve Rubel has mentioned on his own Twitter, this was exactly how blogging started out, and I think that’s a valid point to consider.
So, let’s have a little thought experiment here, shall we? How can Twitter advance? What kind of potential does it have? So far, I’ve seen two very interesting Twitter pages, both of which can give us some idea of the potential here:
1. John Edwards’ Twitter: Find out exactly where John Edwards is as he strolls about the country.
2. BBC World News’ Twitter: Breaking news alerts, in Twitter form.
Both of these are excellent examples of quick updates that can be beneficial for the public en masse. But the John Edwards page gave me an idea: what if Twitter had the ability to be an organizational tool, as well? What if it behaved almost like Stikkit, in the sense that it could automatically detect any location that you say you’re at, or you’ll be at. All of your friends in a given area will be alerted that you’re in that area. So, say John Edwards writes that he’s in Des Moines, Iowa. What if every one of his friends in Des Moines was automatically alerted that he’s in their area? Highly beneficial.
Despite my skepticism of Twitter, it wouldn’t be fair to dismiss it without trying. Thus, I’ve signed up for my own Twitter page, and I’ve even included a Twitter widget in my sidebar. Let’s se how this really works!
Technorati Tags: Twitter, John Edwards, BBC World, Steve Rubel
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[...] As Brad Levinson notes, Twitter feels a bit narcissistic self indulgent. Do people really need to get these constant updates about my whereabouts every few minutes? Nope. Most normal people will play with it for a few weeks, realize no one cares about their cat and that they are writing for an audience of one, get bored and move on to other things. [...]
Is Twitter a Top Down System? » The Bivings Report said this on March 21st, 2007 at 8:09 am
[...] I tried, I really did. I tried it for ten whole days. I posted what I was doing, you know, like, “I’m sitting at my desk at work, doing work.” Or, things like, “I am hungry. I am getting food.” I also signed up for text messages, so that I could get updates such as these from my friends, so that I knew when they were listening to music, driving in cars, or even changing their baby’s diaper (yes, that happened). Was this really how I wanted to spend my 500 text messages a month? [...]
The Beta Stage » Blog Archive » The Great Twitter Experiment: It’s Over said this on March 26th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Hi, there!..784ce805e6c28101379d59520799c1d9
John said this on November 18th, 2007 at 5:48 pm