Loving and Hating Twitter
I’m becoming more of a fan of Twitter as more of my offline friends join up. (You may recall my discussion about this in my post, “Twitter suddenly becomes relevant“)
I find myself both loving Twitter for its updatey brevity and hating it for it’s annoyingness. (Yes, it’s a word) I thought I’d share some of my loves and hates about the way people post on Twitter. Not much point, I know, but perhaps you have the same reactions and we can help each other through.
Loves
- Personal information. What are you thinking? How’s your day? Share a bit of your pysche! Example: “My grandfather was a radioman in WW2. My dad gave me his training manual last Xmas. I only knew him when he was very sick and I was little.”
- A view into other people’s discussions. Example: ” wow this new keyboard rocks!! @purplelime you are really gonna like it!”
- Sharing of things that are interesting, but too short for any other context. Example: “wow you really have to see those new iMacs in person, they are awesome, I want a new keyboard” Cool! “Common Craft” just got a delivery from 1800 flowers. a pomegranate bonsai. no card or name. Thank you Internets!”
Hates
- People who Twitter in third person. Example: “JimBob is feeling lonely after his parapet left his side”
- Not thinking about the stream, using Twitter stream to communicate a specific message to a specific person. Take it to email, punk. Example: “not sure jesse, mine seems to working fine. are you spelling it right?!!”
- Overload. Seriously, we don’t need to know absolutely everything you’re thinking/feeling/doing. Sometimes a little mystery is a good thing. Ask Scooby. Example: “I’m eating a piece of fudge.”
- Running tally of your daily schedule. Example: “Good morning, Twitterland.” or Example: “I’m going to bed, see you tomorrow Tweety friends!!”
Yes, I know that Twitter is a subjective thing, and as such my loves/hates may be completely different than yours. But there are mine… what you about you?
I disagree on the “I’m eating a piece of fudge.” criticism. Those moments embed more meaning in personal circles than they might just looking at it out of context. I like the minutia for two reasons. First, because I keep my twitter stream to just those people I know (online and off), the meaning-making isn’t diluted and the interruptions are manageable. The second reason is due to the way I interact with Twitter: almost exclusively through Twitterrific. The desktop app brings me each tweet in a gentle, pleasant way and then goes away. No further interaction required. That makes a huge difference.
I’m not a big fan of Tweets being used as lengthy discussion, but it is a nice effect that Twitter allows someone to post how they are feeling or ask a question and have responses from those who read it. These tweets ideally should stand alone to some degree, particularly because the other value is to look at the individual posts as an individual stream, to see a chronicle of your own life. The responses tend to lose context quickly.