Twitter's been in the news a lot in the last few weeks. It seems celebrities have discovered it.Figured I'd re-activate my account and give it a go for a few days. I followed Ashton, Oprah, Larry King and even CNN but wasn't really any better informed than I am with Google Reader and News.
The best tips seemed to come from Kevin Rose including this amusing video designed to mention a brand of Vodka:
but I guess he's reading submissions to Digg.
I've been using the new Mac client Tweetie which brings a very smooth interface with some iPhone style sliding animation to the desktop and it kind of works.
Anyhow, we had a chat on ABC Radio National with Steve Canane here.
I tried to tweet while on air, but strangely I found it hard to both concentrate and update my social network at the same time.. here's what I managed:
- In the studio with Steve canane http://twitpic.com/3qf0u
- James Carleton what the papers say... http://twitpic.com/3qfmw
- With angus Kidman of life hacker preparing for an interview in the Sydney "Tardis" http://twitpic.com/3qh29
Such insights combined with blurry iPhone snaps.
For me, blogging once a week seems to produce better writing. Oprah may well kill the cool, but I question the value of the form.
I use it like RSS. I mainly follow the people and websites that bring geekery and news to me: makezine, 774melbourne, wordpress, leo laporte, kevin rose, etc. And slowly as random people comment on my comments, I find some of them are interesting enough to continue interacting with them.
ReplyDeleteReading everything that comes into your stream is a one-to-many problem that quickly becomes untenable. I only follow 40 other users and the level of inbound noise is acceptable for the way I use Twitter.
Also, I don't follow the celebrities. I don't care if Ashton Kutcher thinks Demi Moore's butt is cute, and I certainly don't need to interrupt my day to find out about it.
Finally, play with all the different applications. Twitter is many things to many people and the way you use it may be shaped by the tool you use. Some apps are built for torrents of new tweets, letting you create groups separating those you you want to follow closely or follow in different contexts (work/home/school/etc). Others bring searching and tracking keywords to the fore and you're filtering the oceans of public comments, not just reading what is being written by those you already follow.