I had heard of Twitter long ago, but it really didn’t capture me until I heard it again from Matt Jones. So, I decided to give it a try and I can say that it’s been quite interesting.
Twitter basically asks you one question: What are you doing? It then broadcasts your answer via Web, SMS, or IM to the folks that ‘follow’ you.
That’s it. Very simple.
And I think the strength of Twitter is not in being able to broadcast your answer to everyone in the world or just publicly. I think it works great with small (how small?) groups of folks who know each other reasonably well.
A twitter message is like a touch – like when two folks are next to each other and talking separately to others, they glance at each other and smile or touch in a ‘Hey, there’ recognition of proximity, just a friendly gesture. With that in mind, I have set my updates to go to only ‘followers’ I have listed as ‘friends’, so it’s a private, friendly, close gesture.
The really cool thing is that you can interact with Twitter solely via SMS (yes!). I know someone who is so into Twitter that they upgraded their plan to be able to receive unlimited messages. And I would not be using Twitter if their SMS use and sign up process were not so simple and useful.
And while receiving SMS updates from your circle is great, it was offputting for a while since the incoming message, which is more of a background noise of your social space, beeped the same as some regular SMS that needed my attention. My solution was to actually tone down my message tone or mostly use Twitter when I was in silent mode (you can easily turn on or off the notifications).
Now, I use Twitter to have that background noise of what folks I am interested in are doing. But, we are so trained by SMS to be compelled to send a direct response. I’ve kinda overcome that reflex, but also incorporated that understanding into my own Twitter messages.
Which leads to the question as to how folks use it.
Understanding that it’s a background status message, I write simple notes that express something that is directed specifically at my ‘followers’ – something we share, an inside joke, a common feeling, or just something I want to share with them (they are a witty bunch). And now, an issue for me is how to partition different circles (more on that below). Nonetheless, I wonder how much folks communicate via updates, updating with the ‘followers’ in mind and previous updates in mind, rather than just an isolated update (kinda like a never-ending story, 160 characters at a time).
Another question is if one update causes of flurry of updates, kinda like a nudge from the others (you can send nudges to get others to update).
I asked my wife what she thought of it. She kept picking up my phone and telling me I was ‘twittered’. She wondered if the bulk of the answers were ‘I’m sitting at my computer’, since she figured that the bulk of folks would be doing just that. She did think the SMS part was cool, but still didn’t see any value in trivial status messages from folks she knows – she has enough info overload.
But, when I asked her if should would be interested in updates from her children, she asked me to set us all up. As a mother, and living in another city, such info is of high value to her.
Which brings me to the partitioning of circles – the kind of update I will do for the current crop of friends in my circle is very different from the updates to my wife which are wholly different from the updates to my children (who might not care what _I_ do but surely care what their mother is up to).
That about covers the thoughts that Twitter has set off. Ok, and I also wonder how finding folks who are on Twitter could be made easier (I end up following a string of connections from the folks already on my list, but that keeps me in a certain domain). I also wonder about the cost of broadcasting those SMS – it really multiplies fast.
In any case, give it a try, let me know what you think.
