Imagine someone writes on my Facebook wall. I get an e-mail alert, click the GMail icon and it opens in a new tab. I then click the e-mail, click the link in there, and I’m taken to a new tab where I log in. I scroll down, read the message and click on my friend’s name to write something back.
Yeah. Right.
Now imagine, a few years from now perhaps, you start up your computer. A few seconds later, your display springs to life and that’s it: you’re in, online and ready. Your desktop is your browser is your apps is your file navigator is your network. Everything on it is some floating widget-like ‘window’ that you can move about, resize and merge and manipulate. Touch-screen of course. And one of those little ‘apps’ is here already and it’s called Twitter.
Twitter is like a Massive Multiplayer Online Chat Client. Twitter provides a collective stream of consciousness that tells you who is doing what and why and where and when. And in one instant, you’re suddenly updated about all your favourite people and what they have been up to overnight while their part of the globe lived through its day. If you use one of the Twitter apps, like Twitterific for Mac or Twitteroo for Windows, you’re not far from that vision of desktop connectivity (a Firefox add-on appears to be underway).
But Twitter is not just about sending little messages and telling everyone what you’re up to, and having everyone read that and then respond. Twitter is a global buzz. Here is what makes twitter so different:
- no need to write posts
- no need to visit blogs
- no need to check your feeds
- no need to chat
- no need to comment
- no need to check profiles and shouts and ‘walls’
- no ‘zzzzz’
The result is that all your friends are ‘around’ somehow, but not in their separate little ‘places’ on the web which you have to visit and subscribe to. From now on, their and your thoughts just go with the flow, being picked up by others — or not — as they please.
No expectations, no disappointments.
And blogging, reading, chatting, commenting: they will all remain in use, but posts will become informative again, chats personal, and comments to the point. Just as they were meant to be. Twitter isn’t something ‘like’ this or that, it’s an entirely new concept and we’re simply not getting it yet.
One ‘warning’, though: just don’t put your tweets on your blog or in your lifestream because that is yet another ‘place’ people need to go to (and consequently won’t) and it’s entirely contradictory to the whole idea of Twitter.
Some people, at least, are starting to get it: Christian, Robert, Dave, Jason, Brian, Andrew … heck, it’s top search on Technorati. And if Steve is on there (ahem), something must be catching on?
18 March 2007 at 5:41 pm
Surely there is something I’m missing here, though… I’ve been to http://www.twitter.com and it looks to me like something I’d have to update every few minutes, just so the world would know that, “I’m cooking spaghetti”. The need to constantly run back to my computer and update what I’m doing, in real-time, seems entirely counter-productive to getting things done (read as: “living life”).
On top of that, I have 2 questions: 1. Who wants to know about every waking moment of my life, and 2. Who would I want to know about my every waking moment?
I also have to respectfully disagree that, through the use of Twitter, “posts will become informative again”… You see, the people who inform through their blogs are always likely to do so, just as those people who generally use their blogs to let the faceless masses know that they have a hangnail today are equally likely to do so. The advent of an application like Twitter is not going to change the people… it’s just going to give them one more way to do what they are already doing.
I’ve already fully embraced many of the features of the internet that allow me to stay connected to the people who matter to me. E-mail, chat, and even blogging have totally changed the way I communicate, without question… and I doubt I’d be able to get by without them now that they are such an integral part of my life (okay, I could, but it would be a big adjustment). Still, I can’t help but see Twitter as “going too far”. Would not the effort expended on Twitter be more profitably applied to real interaction, in the real world? Is not an increased web-presense likely to result in a decreased real presense? And what will this do to society as a whole, in the end? I don’t know… I’m only asking.
This is, of course, only my uninformed opinion. I concede that the Internet Utopia / Cyber-social Revolution speculated upon above is possible. I just don’t think it’s probable.
18 March 2007 at 6:52 pm
Wow. I don’t call this uninformed at all, but well thought-out. Of course, no one is forcing you to Twitter, and even when you do, there’s no need for five-minute updates.
The way I see it, it’s not about who ate what. I’ve heard many descriptions, but ‘disposable micro-blogging’ comes close. I use it as a notepad, writing down an observation or a frustration so that I get it out. If a theme emerges, maybe a post will come out of it.
The other way around, I do like how Twitter ‘fills the gaps’. Some bloggers don’t update every day, but now I get an idea of who they are. Whether they’re catching a plane or going for a mountain-walk, it allows me an added glimpse of how their ideas take shape.
As for confusing real people with online ‘identities’, true: there is a danger in that. But I think most of us live well-balanced lives, which should make our tweets and posts all the more interesting.
And now I’d love to see you show up there some time nonetheless ;-)
20 March 2007 at 6:19 pm
I am still now 100% sure about what I think about Twitter. The concept of it is good but it hasn’t completely won me over yet, perhaps by using it for a little while long it may eventually win me over. We will just have to wait and see.
I have been using it to see what it is like and see if it is worth using, I did install a little bit of JS code into my site so that it put my “Twitter Status” on the sidebar, but because Twitter takes so long to load so did my site hence why I took it off.
20 March 2007 at 6:34 pm
That is indeed the point: start using it, add the people whose blogs you read and the ‘Twitter effect’ will kick in.
But putting it on your blog makes little sense: I’m not visiting your blog for your Twitter status. The other way round, your ‘tweets’ may tell me what’s been occupying you, and then, I may see that evolve into a post.
20 March 2007 at 9:19 pm
Could I please ask, what exactly is a “tweet”? I am struggling to figure this out, I have seen the word use in many places. Perhaps the reason I do not know what it is, is because I still am not experiencing Twitter to the full.
20 March 2007 at 9:30 pm
I suppose a tweet occurs when one twitters. There has been some confusion about this, though. Some seem to prefer the term twit but that didn’t go in well with Leo Laporte ;-)