Evas last blog post..Why I Blog

@Carla: Most days I don’t know what to say until I get on it. Then natural conversations happen. Twitter has become the way I wake up to the world – though I wonder what that does to my concentration. :p

@Mike: You’re anything but one-dimensional. But you do a lot of techno-geek stuff that many of us would find interesting to keep up with. Having friends on the cutting edge and keeping you abreast of what’s going on is amazing. My point: serve as the guy that meets us halfway. We all will be better off for it.

@Mynde: Connections, indeed. Hyperconnections would be closer – but I couldn’t say that before I wrote Monday’s post. Sidestepping philosophical arguments about friendship, I can definitely say that I’ve made much better connections with people using Twitter. I look forward to seeing what people are thinking and working on. It’s a community in every important sense of the word.

@Dan: One of the great things about Twitter is how it’s both large and small at the same time. The decentralized nature of following and being followed yields thousands of micro-communities, yet as it catches on from the early adopters to general culture, we’ll get a slice of almost everybody. I’m following Shaq, Britney, and Merlin Mann. Where else can you do that?

@Hugo: I couldn’t help but evaluate my Twitter patterns after this comment. Sometimes the shoe fights…

I think, though, that people use Twitter while they’re doing tasks that they can multitask on. For example, when I’m writing, designing, or reading, I shut it off. If I’m processing email or in-between meetings, I’ll jump on.

Regarding excusing oneself: many of us are involved in several conversations at once. It’s about like when you need to leave a party after you’ve started a few conversations. It is interesting to note the different rules of etiquette and how new forms of communication assume old rules of etiquette that may not imply. I’ll definitely have to think about this more.

Thanks for the insightful comments! It’s also nice to see you took the plunge!

@Betsy: I think a lot of people go through Twitter plateaus. At first, it seems hard to follow 25 people. Then 100 people seems unfathomable. I’m not yet to 1000, and to be honest, I’m not counting – I hope I never will. But it’s great for new connections and finding other people like you with great blogs and stories to tell.

@Angel: I thought the same thing at first – it didn’t seem worth the time. But once you reach a certain critical mass, it pays off. Twitter is one of my better referrers nowadays. Just start conversations and help people. The rest will come – trust me.

@Jazzy: Tell me about it. Finding a middle ground is difficult.

@Andre: I’m going to have to start paying you for the brilliance you add to this blog, Andre. I always love your alternative perspectives.

While I agree that giving an indexed prompt to someone is key, I worry about the prompt given and how it was given. It takes a certain type of person to think that what they’re doing is interesting. It took a bit for me to figure out that the more valuable things for me was in the other uses – had I been told that up front, I would’ve bought in earlier. Better-written marketing copy would go a long way.

In CPR classes, one of the first things they teach you is not to tell the crowd of bystanders to call for help; you’re told to point to an individual in the crowd and tell that person to call. Otherwise, everyone just looks at each other, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

That may seem like a tangent, but the point is that giving users a concrete question to answer, even a mediocre one, is more likely to elicit a response that offering no focal point for discussion.

Of course, it would be terrible if Twitter never evolved beyond its “intended” use, but I think the elves at Twitter knew that users would bring new ideas to the table, which is why extensibility is baked into the platform. They seem to be aware of how technologies get repurposed by communities in the way pointed out by William Gibson: “The Street finds its own uses for things – uses the manufacturers never imagined. The microcassette recorder, originally intended for on-the-jump executive dictation, becomes the revolutionary medium of magnizdat, allowing the covert spread of suppressed political speeches in Poland and China. The beeper and the cellular telephone become tools in an increasingly competitive market in illicit drugs. Other technological artifacts unexpectedly become means of communication, either through opportunity or necessity.”

My favorite use of Twitter is the track command that lets you follow any and all tweets on a given keyword. It’s a great way to put your ear to the ground on a particular topic.

Andre Kibbes last blog post..Springpad: A User-Friendly Notebook

Jazzys last blog post..Uneaks.

Twitter is a mixture of people, and just any social site we got to find readers that may be interested in our posts.

Just my 2 cents.

Angel Cualas last blog post..Media – Does it really care for our Children?

But…the surprise was that I also found it useful to keep up with people I’m interested in. I doubt I’d ever shoot for a thousand followers or follow a thousand – way too much for my one brain cell. But you can see how it’s like the telegraph must’ve been back in the day.

And..if not for Twitter, I wouldn’t have that handy URL tip you gave me, nor a new friend’s blog to read here! Thanks!

Betsys last blog post..AS IF

I find it fascinating to see how people are using it. I like it when people just tweet once or a few times a day. Some people just can’t stop, and sometimes I really wonder what they’re doing other than twittering and following other conversations on twitter. Especially those who excuse themselves about not being able to tweet for a while because they have something to do. Come on, isn’t that becoming a bit pathetic?

Hugos last blog post..Follow Me on Twitter!

twitter.com/ctemplawyer

Dan Schwartzs last blog post..Appellate Court Upholds Judgment Against Lawfirm for Its Employment Contract With Associate