[This article is a continuation from Part 1 of A Beginner's Guide to Twitter] ** Why do people love Twitter? ** Twitter is the kind of tool that splits opinion right down the middle, and there are a great many people public declaring their love and hate for the service. So what are the factors that have people like Tech blogger Robert Scoble - who at this point has 3233 people following his every message - so excited about Twitter? Always-On Micro-Publishing One of the reasons that Twitter has seen such success is its ability to facilitate quick, easy micro-publishing to the world. For those busy people using various devices and gadgets in the average day of communications, Twitter offers a simple, efficient way to cut to the quick. John Blossom writes that: ''Twitter is more than a messaging service - it's a publishing medium that allows people to reach both micro-communities and the world as a whole. For people on the go who are shifting constantly between mobile devices and computer keyboards Twitter allows micropublishers to keep up with their social network more efficiently than either platform alone could manage.'' —John Blossom, "Flittering With Twitter" Extending your online presence Others go further yet, claiming that Twitter is not simply an efficient way to get the word out on the fly, but also an excellent resource for those looking to grow their online presence. Anyone that publishes to the web does so in the hope of attracting more than a handful of readers. Twitter, argues Thomas Hawk, is an excellent way of amplifying your online presence: ''First Twitter, as a social network, is another extension of your online presence. As a blogger if you think of your primary online presence as your blog, much of what you can do on the internet can be amplified through the various social tools available to bloggers. Digg, Slashdot, knowing when to pitch a story to top sites like Boing Boing or Lifehacker or Engadget, Flickr, book marking sites, and sites like Twitter represent ways where you can amplify and expand your ideas, thoughts and messages to your friends, contacts and the world.'' —Thomas Hawk, "Twittermania Sweeps The Blogosphere" The ultimate status indicator Another approach is simply that Twitter allows you to roll-into-one a whole range of communications based around 'what you're doing now'. Rather than having to change your status on your IM, make a call to your colleague or family, making a blog post or sending several one line emails, with Twitter you can let everyone know exactly what you're doing with a single 140 character message. David Chartier writes that: ''We have IM, email, and mobile phones to stay in touch with the world. When our status changes (and I mean 'status' as in 'whatever is going on'), it often involves any combination of setting a new IM status, calling someone to let them know what's going on, posting to a blog or emailing a co-worker to say you're stepping out. Twitter, even in its infancy, has taken innovative strides to remove this tediousness from staying updated and connected with what is going on in the worlds of the people who matter to us.'' —David Chartier, "Why I Love Twitter" ** Why do people hate Twitter? ** Twitter isn't without its detractors, and some of them are very passionate about their distaste for the service. What is it that makes people hate Twitter? Saying too much One of the chief complaints leveled at Twitter is that it encourages people - through its ease of use and very function - to detail the mundane and frankly boring details of their lives. Karoli argues that this is out of a need to belong: ''Is there something to this that I just don’t understand? Or, does the buzz and apparent love of Twitter point to the need that most people have to belong to a group, to identify? These are serious questions. I have friends, on and off line, but I don’t feel the need to know what they’re saying, doing and thinking in real time, and I certainly don’t feel the need to share what I’m saying, doing and thinking, either.'' —Karoli, Twitter THIS Keeping you awake at night The always-on nature of Twitter is for some more than they are happy living with. Certainly, if you are going to get the best out of Twitter, especially on your mobile phone, it makes sense to learn the commands required to stop and start your incoming messages. Otherwise you are left with what could potentially become an intrusive rather than informative service, as detailed by Rachel Metz: ''Twitter lets you turn updates off during certain hours, but I stupidly figured nobody would bother sending a message at, say, 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday. How wrong I was. At first, the incoming texts were just clogging my cell phone's text inbox. But then, in the early hours of a recent Saturday, I awoke to the unmistakable buzz of an incoming text message. I rolled my eyes and texted, "Being woken up by incoming twitter txts" back to the site.'' —Rachel Metz, "Twitter Provides Just Too Much Communication" Low relevance threshold The final complaint leveled at Twitter is that in incorporating group conversations there is a tendency for users to become trapped between other people's thoughts, none of which have any relevance to themselves. Again, this is really an issue of selective filtering, but it is clear to see how an unchecked Twitter account might play havoc with both your mobile phone battery and your brain: ''It is irresistible to respond to people’s “twittering” and ultimately it turns into an IM conversation between two or three people. If I’ve enabled Twitter on my mobile phone, I’m the unwilling witness to long conversation between a few of my so-called friends. Clearly, they’re using Twitter’s web or IM interface and twittering back and forth in the comfort of their computer about dinner plans or something. My phone buzzes away with every post. Why are they doing this to me? Don’t they know they’re setting my phone off with every hit of the enter key? With friends like these, who needs enemies?'' —Scott Jangro, "Why I Hate Twitter" ** What tools are there to extend Twitter? ** The main strength of Twitter is its simplicity as a publishing platform. As such the feature-set available from the Twitter website is quite limited. Fortunately, a great many third-party solutions have cropped up to fill the gap, allowing you to extend the capabilities of Twitter, or to interact with it in new and interesting ways. Conclusions Love it or hate it, Twitter is a force to be reckoned with, and provides a great many opportunities beyond simply telling the world what you ate for breakfast. By making it easy for people to send out short (140 characters or less) messages to their personal webpage, friends and followers, and even the Twitter community at large, the service makes for a compelling way to get the word out fast. Whereas blog posts and emails tend to be longer-winded affairs, Twitter posts are closer in form to the SMS messages you send from your mobile phone, and in fact it is possible to access Twitter in this very way, in addition to using the Twitter website, Instant Messaging or one of the growing number of desktop applications available. This effects the overall nature of the content produced, and very often you will find people sharing information entirely different to that featured in their blog posts. As such, Twitter allows you to keep up-to-date on the very latest information - information that may not make it into the longer form of the blog or newsletter due to time constraints. Twitter is an excellent micro-publishing platform that acts not as a replacement for blogging, emails and SMS, but rather as a complement to their functionality. By making publishing something possible in the space of a few seconds, the stress is firmly on creating social links, sharing key information, and releasing spontaneous thoughts and data into the world in the spur of the moment. Additional resources If you would like to learn even more about Twitter, you might want to check out the following links: Also, in the July 15, 2007 issue of netConnect, Melissa Rethlefsen provides additional library-related information and links about Twitter and messaging tools.
It was from Justin Kan of Justin.tv, which lets viewers watch Kan's life 24 hours a day via a webcam he wears on his head. The message read simply, "sleeeeeeep."
Here is a small selection of some of the many tools and services available:
Originally written by Michael Pick for Master New Media and originally published as: "Mobile And Instant Messaging Meets Social Networking: Twitter - A Beginner's Guide" 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Documents
| Twitter: A Beginner's Guide, Part 2 |
The second part of this primer describes extended tools for Twitter, and discusses why some people love Twitter while others hate the whole concept.
|
|
Contribute to this topic
Do you have an article, presentation, or other content to share on this topic?
You can post it on this topic page. Find out more about submitting documents in the Member Center.
Ratings You must be signed in to rate this item
|
Average (1 Vote)
|
Comments