What's Twitter, and why I love it

If you work in an environment filled with friendly, fascinating people, where you continually hear about exciting news (local, online, and around the world), and you are encouraged to be witty and playful, then you don't need Twitter.

However, I work in a cubicle in my house (really -- I had a surplus Herman Miller cubicle installed here) and the cats have their limitations as colleagues.

Thus, five or six times a day, I Twitter. I take a look at what people are saying, throw in some of my own teasers, check "@" replies, answer publicly posted questions, and look at private "direct mail" I receive. My Twitter breaks correspond to the pattern I followed when I worked in a traditional office: Greet people on arrival, mid-morning coffee break, lunch, mid-afternoon break, and departure in the evening. The one addition is that I'm likely to check Twitter once or twice in the evening -- by which time most of us are talking about what we're cooking for dinner or what activities we're up to (shopping, yoga, classes, crafts, dealing with the kids, etc.)

Who, you might ask, are these people I'm Twittering with? Well, unlike the real office where you are usually stuck with a few folks you don't want to deal with, on Twitter you hear only from the people you want to hear from -- you select the individuals you follow.

I've selected colleagues from my past jobs in tech, clients and colleagues from my current SEO work, leaders in the Seattle social media and blogging field, some bellydance, yoga, and fitness folks, and -- here's the twist -- their friends. This "second tier" of Twitter is where it gets really interesting. I see my friends commenting on other people's remarks, and I get curious about the other people, who often get curious about me, and the next thing I know we're exchanging tips on everything from cooking to software. Or meeting in Ballard for lunch.

Twitter is also a great way of keeping up on what's going on with friends from out of town. This way you don't end up finding out, months after the fact, that they've changed jobs, moved, or split up with their significant others. You pick it up on Twitter, and can jump in with an appropriate private direct message.

I most often use Twitter from a web browser, but there are a variety of third party apps that let you read and post Tweets from a smart phone. (This list includes desktop widgets and smart phone apps.) I use PocketTweets but also use Twinkle, an app that lets me see other Twitter/Twinkle users within 1 mile, 2 miles, 5 miles (you get it) from wherever I am. It's fun during an event (such as Folklife) or when you're traveling. Or during a snowstorm, when you want to know what's open in the neighborhood.

Yes, some people do take Twitter a bit too seriously. Some try to game it as a social networking tool, posting a bunch of marketing messages thinly disguised as clever repartee. (It's like having a colleague at work suddenly launch into an attempt to recruit you into their religion, or sell you Amway products.) Fortunately, Twitter makes it very easy to "unfollow" these folks. And I do. (I'm not selective about who follows me, but Twitter offers a blocking tool for people who are.)

The competitive types get all excited about Twitter Grader, which ranks your influence within the Twitter community. I don't know what the grading algorithm is, but I suspect it looks primarily at the quality of your followers (how long they've been on Twitter, how often they post, and how many followers they have).

There's a trend towards merging all your online communications into one dashboard, so you'll see people having their Tweets appear on their blogs, or on Facebook. That's too large, and too uncontrolled an audience for me. What happens on Twitter, stays on Twitter, as far as I'm concerned.

Not just chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers

I will never thing of social media, or s'mores, quite the same way after reading this Guy Kawasaki guide on how to attract more followers on Twitter.

For one brief, shining moment

Twitter is at its best right now.

An odd and wonderful little web-based application, Twitter allows you to follow your friends and be followed (or not) by others. What you see are the comments of people you want to hear from. And those comments are limited to 140 characters, making it an enviroment that favors the informed, the playful, and the articulate.

While there are Twitter users who want to follow or be followed by hundreds of people for marketing reasons, the majority of Twitter users seem to be viewing fewer than 100 people. In my case, I'm following about 40 friends, another 20 friends of those friends, and a dozen or so people who are either famous or interesting.

Twitter isn't for everyone, at least not at the moment—and that's a big part of its current charm. No one is talking about celebrities, few people are trash talking, and when someone complains about have to block "spammers," all they're referring to are some thick-skinned over-energetic social networking types who who've deluded themselves into thinking people want to hear about some "me-too" app their clients' have developed.

Currently, Twitter has no ads, no deafening MySpace music clips, and no annoying pop-ups.

It's all wonderfully reminiscent of the early days of the World Wide Web, and the early days of blogging. And it's attracting some of the same people.

If this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to check out Twitter now. If you wait, and it jumps the shark, you'll wonder what on earth the attraction was.

Today's favorite Tweet

I'm increasingly fond of Twitter, the online watercooler where you can follow your friends and engage in some back-and-forth. Comments are limited to 140 characters, so the environment favors the one- or two-liner.

I smiles when I saw this one, from a friend of a friend, aimed at followers of the long-running, ever-mutating Dr. Who television series:

Our 2 yr old saw my iphone * desktp wallpapr Tardis picture & said "trashcan". Clearly needs 2 be sent 2 the Gallifrean re-education camps.

Macworld 2008: Tech notes

Back from Macworld!

I'd thought Twitter would revolutionize the Macworld social experience, but I was wrong. I'd failed to take into account two factors:

1. The Twitter network slowed to a crawl during Steve's keynote.

2. The AT&T E network couldn't penetrate Moscone South, the underground hall that's the site of the main Expo, so you couldn't keep up with Tweets using an AT&T mobile phone. The wifi option was no help, as wifi networks in Moscone kept going down (including the one at the Bloggers Lounge).

Nevertheless, I did manage to post my best Tweet ever, announcing that I'd just spotted Barak Obama getting out of a limo and entering the side door of the Westi Hotel at Union Square Thursday a bit after noon.

It's hard to believe that a year ago (even seven months ago!) there were no iPhones. They are pretty much standard fare around San Francisco now. I usually take a 12" laptop to Macworld and lug it around, but this year I left the laptop in my hotel room and handled just about everything, including short emails, notes, photos for an article, and even some posts to a photo blog, using the iPhone. I left longer emails for when I got back to my room (again, a place with molasses-like wifi). My back certainly appreciated it...I was able to enjoy Macworld carrying just my regular messenger bag-style purse. My only regret was lack of zoom and flash for photos; next year I'll take along a little Canon Digital Elph.

Cameras of all sizes were much in evidence, with many people snapping photos of products instead of taking brochures. My strategy was to take a shot of an interesting product and then a shot of the booth's signage, so I could identify the item by the adjacent signage shot after I'd uploaded the pictures to iPhoto.

The other technology item that was ubiquitous in San Francisco this year was GPS. All the airport shuttle vans had it, and thank god. The driver from the Oakland airport acted as if he'd never ventured into downtown San Francisco before.

My friend Doug Plummer recently rented a car with GPS while on a photo shoot in Boston, a city where the roadways usually confound him. "This time I had an authoritative female voice directing me," Doug writes in his blog.

I've just submitted an article about some noteworthy Macworld products; it's scheduled for online publication later this week and I'll be sure to link to it then.

Yes, no, and maybe

As someone who writes frequently about online technology and user experience, I feel both entitled and obligated to try out all the new stuff.

Speaking of new stuff, Blogger is now officially out of beta. (There's a great "out-of-beta" logo on the log-in page.)

After starting out blogging six years ago with Dave Winer's ground-breaking Manila software, I began using Blogger in 2003. It's a balanced mix of attractive design, friendly user interface, and innovative features, including complete freedom to edit your own template code. It grabbed me the way Mac OS software does. I've since flirted with other well-known blogging apps, and while each one has elements I liked better than Blogger's, each one turned out to be unacceptably lame in at least one major area. Blogger, bless its soul, is all-around adequate.

I mention my Blogger experience because it's typical of the way I relate to new software, online or off. If it doesn't grab me in the first 15 minutes, I am, as they say, so out of there.

Flickr grabbed me; Webshots didn't, thanks to some of the tackiest, most outdated visuals on the web. And Flickr has kept me via new features and clever, to-the-point communication (greeting me in foreign languages, etc.).

Side Job Track grabbed me. Despite narrow options and a bit of a fussy user interface, it does what it does (keep track of freelance hours and billing) brilliantly. In a word: convenience.

Second Life grabbed me. World of Warcraft didn't; WoW was like meeting an interesting but intense and overpowering person at a party.

Currently I'm re-exploring Pandora Internet Radio, Twitter, and (maybe) Saft.

Pandora starts with a recording artist you enjoy and creates a radio channel of similar material, allowing you to tailor the channel content with yes and no votes. I'm not sure if this is going to fit into my life because I listen to music on the iPod rather than on the computer. (Computer = work, iPod = workouts and travel.) But, nice idea.

Saft is a Safari add-on that provides a searchable history and full-screen browsing, among other features. But some of the VersionTracker user reviews blame Saft for screwing up Safari. That sort of thing is a dealbreaker for me. I don't install "improvements" that can make a key piece of software (that currently works adequately) not work at all!

Twitter, as its name suggests, is social software. In a sense, it's an extension of the little tagline you get in the iChat (and presumably also in the AIM) interface, that lets you see what your friends are doing. But Twitter takes it further, integrating the information into blogs, and making it accessible via cell phones. At the moment, I'm seeing Twitter as just another piece of desktop clutter, but I'm quite sure I'm not the target audience. I mean, do you think of me as someone who twitters, or someone who blogs?

What software is on your current evaluation list? (And can anyone reassure me about installing Saft?)