03 February, 2009

What Kind of Twit Twitters?

Well, you're about to find out. Look near the bottom of the left-hand column and you'll find my new twitter stream.

I've been resisting Twitter for quite a while now. Honestly, it just looks like a waste of bits. Yet so many people rave about it - people I would otherwise think quite highly of - that I suppose I ought to give it a go.

First impressions:

1. It's easier to do than I expected. I just leave the Twitter page open and type a quick burst of rubbish into it when it occurs to me to do so. The 140 character limit is actually a big help here. It stops me being as prolix as I'd like and therefore saves me from wasting so much time.

2. I'm just as likely to type in a random thought as to answer the question 'What are you doing?' which is supposed to be what it's all about. Maybe my random thoughts will be more interesting than the fact that I'm just off to have lunch. Twitter says its for the bits of your life in between blogs and emails. Well, maybe for me it's for the bits of my mind in between more coherent utterances.

3. Even after just half-a-dozen twitterings, the whole is looking far more interesting than the parts. Maybe a twitter stream is going to be a far more valuable and entertaining read than each individual utterance.

4. The word 'twitter' is very irritating. It's like 'twitcher'. An individual twitter entry should be called a 'twitch'. Maybe the next big thing will be like twitter but with a ten word limit. We could call that a 'tick'.

Anyhoo, I'll try it for a while and see what it comes to. Maybe I'll enjoy this mental twitching enough to keep at it for a while. If you're one of the twitterati (a twitcher,) then follow my twitchings by clicking the 'Follow me on Twitter' link at the bottom of my twitchings.

If you can bear it.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hahaha - I felt the exact same way! I only joined about a month or 2 ago myself.

I have found it much better than I thought - but people don't use it the way it's described either.

I've found people rarely tweet about what they are doing - which is good as I don't care if they are popping out for a coffee, etc. I've found people mostly tweet about questions they have, interesting observations or links to articles, etc.

I'm not following a lot of people either which means I'm not swamped with info.

See you on the... twitter stream? Maybe that should be Twitterstream as in a proper noun. Hmmm, maybe I'll tweet about that ;)

Cheers,
Dan.

graywave said...

Hi Dan! Nice to hear from you.

I'm already following about thirty blogs - some of which have several posts a day! - and I think I might go mad if I start following twitchstreams as well!

Anonymous said...

Has anyone researched who, demographically, is mostly using Twitter yet? It doesn't seem to be something which has struck the early-twenties brigade yet.

The Gray Wave Jukebox


Powered by iSOUND.COM