I was out at Rob Tarzwell’s birthday celebration at the Yaletown Brew Pub a few weeks ago, and a few of us pulled out our iPod Touch/iPhones to check on something online — I found free wireless so my Touch worked just as well as the iPhone without the expense of a ridiculously priced data plan.
While I was on, I checked Twitterific, the free iPod Twitter App, announced a few updates I saw and got some questions about what Twitter was.
Twitter, I explained, is a mini-blog that lets you post short entries that anyone can “follow”. It lets you stay connected to friends without the one-on-one requirement of instant-messaging or the longer, more formal writing of a “blog post”.
“Ok,” asked Jennifer, “but what is it FOR? Why do you need to be able to do that?” She and Rob stared at me waiting for a response.
My answer wasn’t all that good. You don’t have to follow friends on Twitter — there are “official” things to follow. My secondary webhost Dreamhost has a Twitter account that they use to announce downtime, problems and other important updates. Heroes actor Greg Grunberg has a Twitter account, and interacts with his fans there, including my friend Josh with this fun update:
(Greg’s character Matt Parkman is a mind reader)
Mostly I just like staying in constant touch. I am, as a friend once said, “jacked-in”. I love the online world, I like staying in touch with people online without requiring a formal conversation, and I love regular updates. There are times when I’m working and will check Google Reader and see no updates on the sites I’m subscribed to and I’ll be a bit bummed. Geez, I only checked there 15 minutes ago, why isn’t there something new!?
Of course, this can get out of hand…
But not everyone is like me, so it was difficult to describe why “regular people” should be using Twitter. I just knew they probably should.
Well now I have an answer.
Rob’s father-in-law, Doug Pink, ended up in hospital earlier this week. We were playing poker on Sunday when Jess phoned Rob to give him an update and it didn’t sound good. That night I drove Rob out to the ‘wack so he could be with Jess (his tiny sports car had summer tires) and help her out through this tough time.
And then I waited for updates on Doug’s condition. And waited… I’ve known Jess for ages, and Doug was always a really friendly, pleasant guy, and he loves his daughter, and I know she loves him. I cared what happened, but couldn’t find out!
Finally, Rob made a Facebook status update, and I posted a comment on it thanking him and then noting that, hey, this is exactly what Twitter is good for — getting status updates on important news out to lots of people without requiring big formal blog posts, or one-on-one-conversations over and over again.
Rob agreed, got a Twitter account, and has been updating it with Doug’s condition, which I’m happy to report is getting better. You can just check that URL, or get your own Twitter account and have it automatically updated with posts from there (and anyone else you want to follow).
So there you go. What’s Twitter for? Connecting. Maybe not all the time every day like I and the other technophiles do, but when that connection is really important, Twitter is an invaluable tool.
Also, it’s free, geez.
That’s precisely what I found as a good use in it. When we found out we were having our second son, RIGHT NOW, it was easier to twitter something out to my friends. Unfortunately I had just signed up and didn’t have all my friends following, but I did ask one of my friends to let my other friends no since I was getting scrubbed into to watch the doctors gut the love of my life and yank out my son.
It’s also just really fun to watch people you admire be somewhat normal.
http://hijinksensue.com/2008/12/03/tweroes-and-twillains/
This is exactly what Twitter SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR.
I’m not joking, I unfortunately have a similar story with a different conclusion. My ex-wife’s father recently had a medical emergency and her sister decided to Twitter it and neglected to call family and friends. I feel this should be needless to say, I would have thought it was too obvious: anyone that wasn’t on Twitter didn’t get the message. There was this assumption someone would pass it on, but of course then there’s the “oh, who’s reading it online and who isn’t?”
The people involved could be blamed, for sure, but the basic problem was a gap in communication, period.
A phone call or two would have sufficed. I love the online world too, hell I’ve been fascinated by connecting devices since the CMU coke machine. But human social networks often work just fine and there are situations where they’re still the best. For some things, it’s far better using a non-broadcast system that involves personal feedback.
What a horribly tacky and inconsiderate way to communicate something of import.
Don’t even get me started at the lack of wisdom of conveying important information on one private company’s message gateway.
Rog, you’re just pointing out that people who need the information should be informed of the Twitter feed first. Obviously that’s true. Phone up friends and family and let them know what’s happened and that you’ll be updating your feed as you get more news.
Once they know they can check it out for updates it becomes an incredibly useful tool for instant updates to multiple people without the hassle of maintaining an email list or formal blog posts.
This is exactly what happened in this case, and it worked out great. I think your all-caps “should not be used for” goes too far when all that’s required is a simple caveat.
@Puck: I think it’s unreasonable to expect everyone ~should~ subscribe to a service to stay informed with friends and family. That’s the paradox, because social tools aren’t as useful unless they’re fully accepted.
Regardless, that’s not the solution anyway. Within my unfortunate experience: Aside from the people I mentioned with no access, of the people who did have the feed some of them missed the message too. They’d become accustomed to the usual day-to-day drivel that tends to come with Twitter, so they hardly paid attention at the time. Some caught up later skimming, but it wasn’t the prompt emergency message it should have been. What a horrible way for people to find out. If the situation had been a bit worse, this would have affected people deeply. As it was, it created unecessary social rifts between people. =(
That’s not my definition of a great social tool, more one that’s problematic unless used specifically for what it’s good for.
It’s broadcast communication, not personal communication. Some things ~should~ be personally communicated. I’m not blaming the people involved, I’m saying this is an inappropriate usage of this social tool.
It lends itself better to less important things. There’s so much minutae, you cannot seriously expect everyone to pay attention, or even use Twitter at all.
It’s very much the new toy right now, many are enthralled by communicating in a way they’re previous unaccustomed to. That’s wearing off for some, Twitter already has a strong reputation as a time-waster. My guess is they’ll have another growth spurt or two but eventually it has to settle down into its niche. It’ll never be uqiquitous because it just plain doesn’t replace another communication methods. It’s a wee bit one sided for starters, with the extroverted on one side and the lurkers on the other.
Theoretically Twitter works together with other communication, but that’s where I’m saying it falls down, because it’s a victim of its own social rules it has created for itself. Is there much point to using a convenient broadcast system personal communication? Sure. I don’t have a problem with that, combine it with other things. But I do think it’s irresponsible and even a bit offensive to insist that it ~should~ be used, that everyone ~should~ get Twitter, as if it were some important communications revolution. It’s not.
I expressed in caps to try to carry that point across, that I was, to a small degree, offended by your style of promotion. Hey, it’s your blog, express your opinions as you like. Feel free to delete my comments if they offend you in return. Or you can call it a different perspective or opinion if you like, but I’m not sure you really wanted me to say what I was fully thinking: This is a technocratic approach to a problem that already had better working working solutions, more personal ones. Socially, personal = good.
I’m not saying we should be luddites and go back to word of mouth, but I’m saying Twitter feeds should be treated as complimentary channels, not required ones.
Way more than one simple caveat.
To be fair, a first round of phonecalls with followups via Twitter could be complimentary usage.
What’s sticking in my craw over this is the general promotional and sales-pitch nature of the common man ~should~ use Twitter and the natural tendency that follows to expect people to get information that way for the sake of convenience posting it.
When all that’s required to “use” twitter to get broadcast updates is to visit someone’s Twitter profile URL I don’t really see any problem with “insisting people must use it”.
My Twitter profile is public. Anyone can go to http://twitter.com/joefulgham without getting an account to follow my feed. There’s even an RSS link to my updates so Twitterphobes can simply follow me using an RSS reader like Google Reader.
If, Murphy forbid, Mel ended up in the hospital because of some kind of emergency Twitter would be the instant-access place that I’d be posting updated information. All I’d need to do it is my iPod and an open WiFi to do the updates and everyone who cared could keep up with the information.
Instead of being deluged with “Is she ok? How’s she holding up? What’s the plan now?” phone calls all the information would be available there. I wouldn’t have to repeat myself over and over again and could concentrate on what’s important — and talk personally with close family rather than dozens of friends and acquaintances.
Your main complaint seems to be that someone assumed Twitter was enough to get a message out. That’s obviously not the case, but that’s mostly because Twitter isn’t universally accepted. It’s only been in the past few months that it’s been talked about on public forums. Yet your argument is *against* it being universally accepted when that would have also solved the problem.
I’m curious what you think a better alternative would have been to the failed communication you mention. Both email and phone calls fail compared to Twitter’s universally simple access and instant-updates that don’t require immediate attention or clogged inboxes.
I do think that Twitter is an important communications revolution. It’s a *small* one though. It’s really only one step past the now ubiquitous Instant Messaging app. It’s that with “web interface accessible anywhere the web is” plus “broadcast rather than tightcast”. But those changes are significant and important.
But as I mentioned in this post — constant Twitter updates aren’t for everyone. At least, they aren’t yet. But with open wifi appearing in more places and powerful handheld wifi computers like the iPod/iPhone coming down in price and up in features more and more people will be in constant access.
I certainly think the service can and should grow in usefulness. I think a simple solution to the problem mentioned would be an “importance” tag on each message. Let “I’m going out for some Thai food, yum!” be flagged as “minutiae” while “I just fell down the stairs and broke my collar bone, someone find me and pick me up!” could be flagged “EMERGENCY”. Readers could filter out unimportant stuff they (probably) don’t care about.
I’ll leave you with this. You seem to be at Stage 1.
The chart comes across a wee bit pseudo-religious. Don’t make me use that technocrat word again or I’ll start thinking you’re not really an atheist. =P
The point is, it’s just microblogging.
We already had this since SMS years ago. I’ve still got a perl script around somewhere for my old Clearnet phone updates to my blog. I’m a wee bit past the chart: discovery, acceptance and discarded for just not suiting my needs. Now it’s more convenient to post and feed retrieving is a snap. And it’s got a cutesy name, media attention and people like yourself proclaiming revolution.
When you try to make a big social construct out of it– when the media does the same– then people get trapped into trying to use it for things it’s not suitable for. Socially, you’re arguing this is a good thing, whereas I’m saying we already had networks of people who knew how to communicate. Twitter isn’t entirely without merit, but it’s rather small, true to its basic nature I guess.
And emergency situations used to go better, socially speaking.
So what you’ve got is cold convenience inappropriate for more personal contacts, but okay for the fringe minor acquaintances. So I’m arguing this isn’t appropriate for important information and you’re carefully pretending you didn’t suggest that– but still try to give it the same weight.
It’s fluff. Twitter is fluff. You’re making it into something it’s not, that it’s really bad at. And when I say so, then there’s the hedging that no, you’re more personal socially where it matters. Do the math, Twitter doesn’t matter.
I’m finding myself hard pressed to understand why you would be in the emergency room plinking away at your iPhone to inform minor acquaintances. Inappropriate is the mild word.
Because breaking your collarbone, it’s always easier to type than hit one button and speak?!?
It’s fluff until it isn’t. It doesn’t matter until it does. I’ve pretty much admitted that during my initial post.
I’d be in the emergency room plinking away to inform *everyone*. Mel’s parents, my mother, my sister, Mel’s friends, our D&D group who are all close friends, my clients wondering why I’m not available at the moment. Anyone who cared and wanted up-to-date informaton on what’s going on. That’s not minor. It’s at least a dozen phone calls and repetition of the same — possibly painful to talk about — information. Those people aren’t minor acquaintances and I can keep all of them up to date on the information. Tweeting that out to those who wouldn’t be first on the phone-call list means I can spend more time on the phone with those that matter, spend more time with her if she needs it, or doing anything else that might help.
It’s quite possible that Twitter won’t matter. Facebook is certainly attempting to make that true with their most recent update. The merged “share” button and the conversion of “pages” (the ‘is-a-fan-of’ stuff) to “Public Profiles” seems to be a direct attempt to compete with Twitter but I think it’s going to take a while to get some celebrities to make “Public Profiles” on Facebook when a Twitter account is so much simpler and a lot less hassle.
You could certainly argue that Twitter is just a symbol of the overall change that the Internet, social networking, and increasingly widespread wireless life is making in our lives. We’re far more connected and that connection is growing at an incredible pace.
I’ve tweeted from pubs with free wireless and had friends ask if they could join me because they’re in the area. I’d never have though to phone them out of the blue. I’ve tweeted with questions that I didn’t know which of my friends could answer. I’ve already helped out two moderately-famous web sites with WordPress help because they tweeted with problems.
Yes, that’s all minor, but it’s also incredible. Soon — incredibly soon — Twitter or something like it is going to be so ubiquitous that people will forget how they communicated before, and may even think like you — that it doesn’t matter.
To be honest, I’m still not sure what your problem with it is. The SMS argument seems to miss the point of Twitter. It’s not just microblogging, it’s consolidated microblogging — people don’t have to come to my site to get all my tweets, they go to Twitter and get *all* the feeds. I can get mine on my iPod and can check it wherever I’ve got free wireless — which is a lot of places these days!
And come on, comparing Twitter to your own Perl script run on your own web site is like saying Google isn’t a big deal because you can search your own computer. Twitter matters because it’s not run just run on each person’s machine. It’s “in the cloud”, accessible and open.
It’s a minor revolution in the same way a zipper was a minor technological achievement. Sure, zippers are simple, they’re obvious, everyone uses them. Yes, eventually we’ll all calm down about Twitter and it (or something like it) will become a zipper — ubiquitous and barely thought of. But imagine being around when the zipper first appeared! People who “got it” would be blown away and would be proclaiming the revolution. Others, like yourself, would say “it joins two pieces of cloth together, big deal. We already had buttons.”