Life is grand

Twitter’s not for twits

Twitter is a strange little creature. Hyper simple, super focused and potentially very useful. If I explained it here you’d think it was a frivolous service for asbos and ADD afflicted kids. Worse than blogging, way worse than IM and email, bah!, way worse than that email malarky that will never catch on with us high-minded folk.

follow PaulMWatson at http://twitter.com

The way I see Twitter is as the background murmur in a cafe filled with super intelligent people. You let the stream of twitters slip by in the background until a keyword or thought pulls you in and you respond to it. The next thing you know you’ve helped someone with a problem in your area of expertise or they’ve helped you or you’ve shared a joke that titillates just two people on the face of the earth.

It is a way of connecting as if serendipity could be programmed.

Don’t be too bothered by it. Don’t try and read every twitter, just let it flow by*.

* Much the way you should treat RSS really.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Post, im, message, presence, status, twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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James Corbett 1 year ago 1 point
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Paul, mind if I add you to a list of Irish 'coworkers'/web-workers (ie. freelancers, homeworkers, startuppers, etc)?

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http://eirepreneur.blogs.com

Shog9 1 year ago 1 point
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>> If I explained it here you’d think it was a frivolous service for asbos and ADD afflicted kids.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I already thought that. ;-P

That said, what do you actually *get* out of it? I mean, your cafe metaphor sounds classy and all, but... i ignore people. I *depend* on ignoring people to get anything done! For email, i filter it so i can scan for messages that actually pertain to me. For IM, i shut off all "active / inactive" notifications, all "zzz has changed her name" notifications, *all* notifications except for those that let me know someone's actually asking me a question. And even those, i reduce to a tiny little icon at the bottom of the screen.

Much as i feel bad for depriving others of the ability to know what i'm doing at all times, and deprived for not indulging my voyeuristic side... i just can't imagine what Twitter brings to the table *besides* pure, unadulterated Noise...

?

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Paul Watson 1 year ago 1 point
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It is not for when you are deep in a programming task. Twitter respects your IMs status so if you are away or busy you won't get the cafe murmur. But when you are surfing the web or replying to emails it is handy to tap into what a group of people you respect or work with are thinking, saying and doing.

And James, go right ahead, thanks.

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http://www.paulmwatson.com/

WillemM 1 year ago 1 point
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Sounds like a fun idea. Although you can get distracted pretty fast by the twitters flowing by.

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http://www.mein-design.nl/willem

Twitter’s not for twits

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