liz_marcs | Seriously. Explain Twitter to me.

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Seriously. Explain Twitter to me.

This was a conversation that I had started with someone on Sunday (a determined Twitterer).

Either she was simply a bad spokesmodel, or there's something in my brain determined not to Get It.

Can someone please explain why Twitter is supposedly so awesome to me?

And I'm inviting you to pull out all the stops. Tell me what tools/uses/wonderful things Twitter has and is good for. I am open to being convinced despite my heavy skepticism.

Confession: I sekritly think that Twitter is for people who don't know the concept of "personal boundaries, plzkthx."

I'd also like to add that I'm utterly ambivalent about the Twitter feeds that are showing up with increasing frequency on my Flist. I don't read them because I just don't care. If they're not under a cut, I'll scan them and every once in a while I'll see something interesting, but otherwise...meh.

I do admit to being annoyed that some people on my FList have opted to go all Twitter feed all the time. Yeah. I dunno either.

So, seriously. I know a few of you are Twitter-heads. Explain it to me. Seriously.

Random drive-by strangers are, as always, welcome to comment on public posts. The more unique points of view on this, the better.

Pee Ess — People who hate Twitter are likewise more than welcome to comment. That includes people who tried and hated, and people who hate the concept in toto.

Talk to me people. Your curious operator is standing by.

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GAAAAAAAH.

I *NEVER* read those Twitter posts. I find it completely off-putting. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the flist has to say about it.

Stay tuned. I'm sure there'll be plenty of people piping up.

Twitter seems to be that thing where people either HATE or LOVE once they use it. Those like you and me who are, "Ummmm, LOL whut?" don't even bother,

To be honest, I can sort of see how it can be useful — i.e., the Twitter clouds from the election and when that AA plane dumped in the Hudson. It's useful, I think, as a flash-on-the-spot-man-on-the-street reporting tool.

That said, I can't figure out how it's useful in your daily life.

I don't get Twitter either. The best uses for it I've seen and the only ones I follow are fannish.

http://twitter.com/Othar

The Girl Genius webcomic started this twitter to tell the offscreen story of a minor yet awesome character.

http://twitter.com/_S_A_R_A_H_

And this is a more twitter-y Twitter from the POV of the household AI Self Actuated Residental Automated Habitat from the tv show Eureka.

I look at it as a fun way to keep in touch with friends throughout the day when we can't use IM. For things that are one-liners and I don't want to spam my f-list with them.

It's also handy when you're out and about because you can set it up on your phone and send/receive tweets that way.

I dislike when people do not cut their Loud Twitter posts because either I've already read it on my Twitter feed or I'm not interested. I sort of understand the concept of wanting to archive the posts, but I wish people would cut them.

I am in complete agreement with this post. Twitter is great fun and good company on my phone when I'm AFK, and it makes a nice little daily log if I'm out-and-about and want to remember what I've been noticing through the day.

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kajivar - 2009-02-10 17:16 (UTC) - Expand

Remove LoudTweets using CSS tricks

matgb - 2009-02-11 00:10 (UTC) - Expand

I'm a twitter skeptic. I see how it could be useful for certain companies to have a twitter feed (websites uses them as status updates, you can also use it to inform people), but as far as a personal use of twitter is concerned, I don't see the appeal.

I do know of a friend who got an internship offer after twittering on her search, though, so it can have some uses.

I don't hate twitter, but, like you, I really, really do not get it.

Everyone I know who uses twitter loves it - but they cannot explain why. They all say you have to use it to learn to love it.

Sounds like crack to me!

I similarly do not get Facebook, though I seem to play there a fair bit. There is less to Facebook than meets the eye.

I hope you follow this post up - I'd love to know whether you end up trying twitter or not!

There is less to Facebook than meets the eye.

*g* Ain't that the truth!

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liz-marcs.livejournal.com - 2009-02-11 18:08 (UTC) - Expand

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rhythmaning.livejournal.com - 2009-02-14 11:57 (UTC) - Expand

I'm still figuring out how to use Twitter, but for me it's keeping tabs on what interesting people are doing. I really don't need to know what you're having for lunch, and the cross-posting to LJ annoys me, too. I mean, what's the point?

Twitter feeds were handy during the election cycle for following debates and the like when I was away from a TV. HuffPost had one set up, and it was excellent. In Mumbai, Twitter was the most up to date source of information about the attacks.

But other than for following news as it breaks, I don't have a use for it.

I've found it to be useful when I just need to give a one line description or something quick. It's easier to have one squeeful oneliner on my twitter than to update LJ with like three or four of them in a day. Twitter kind of condenses them at the end of the day so it's not constant "SQUEE" pause "SQUEE" pause, etc, on my LJ.

Also twitter's hookup with cellphones makes it very useful if you're always on the go. I know someone who's on their cell most of the day and it's how they can keep up with where people are and what they're doing. At one point, they used it as a business tool while coordinating things with their company.

It's hit or miss, though. I don't use it all the time.

THAT SAID, I keep thinking that I should pimp a Fotolog at you for your take a picture a day project. That's kind of exactly what Fotolog's about and they have RSS feeds, etc.

...also I work there so I could get you a 'Gold Camera' account for free. But that's neither here nor there.

ETA: Also, it's useful because you can update Twitter through Digsby and while I'm actually asked to have my AIM client open all the time, LJ not so much. So twitter is good for when I want to communicate during work.

So, I have to ask, is the "de Brabant" a historical reference or a fannish one? (I'm a long-term Forever Knight fan.)

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daniidebrabant.livejournal.com - 2009-02-10 23:08 (UTC) - Expand

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havocthecat - 2009-02-11 02:48 (UTC) - Expand

I'm not into the Twitter concept. This may be because I am crap at texting (my Motorola RazR doesn't have a real keyboard) but some of it is because a lot of people seem to use Twitter to exchange private jokes. Whatever.

I haven't verified this, but one of my students said that Twitter does not censor to the same degree that Facebook or other sites, so that made it go up in my estimation. I don't use it and I don't foresee using it unless I really really really want to be hyperconnected throughout the day, but I think like any other online app, it is as useful and innovative as much as the people who use it are.

I like it, often I don't have the time or oomph to write an LJ post at the end of the day. Also often the things I want to talk about are small and trivial but I want to share them anyway. I use Twitter because it's a way of doing that, of fitting something in 140 characters. Little slices of life. OK, the last few days it's all been me moaning about having a cold, but sometimes it's just 'wow, the sunrise over the mountains looks wonderful' and things of that ilk. There's an immediacy about Twitter too, things happening *right now* to people. Also I wouldn't do an LJ post just to moan (in <140 characters) about work, but with Twitter that works and then through the day a larger picture often appears and at the end of the day LoudTwitter makes all my Twitter updates into one post which may or may not make sense. Twitter updates are both more and less considered and thought out than LJ posts, because you don't have time to be measured and reasonable but you do have to pare updates down to fit in the character limit.

(I also do use it to chat to a RL friend sometimes because it's cheaper then texting!)

As far as I can tell, Twitter is "Stream of consciousness" soundbyte posting. Which annoys the frak out of me - I really don't like it, and I doubt I'll ever try it. It reminds me of those news "tickers", like on CNN, that just scroll along with a one-liner news snippet. I've gotten to where I can pretty much ignore it, because it has no depth, no substance. Twitter gives me the same feeling.

hear, hear.

I got a Twitter, but Iz doin' it rong.

I post about every 2-3 weeks, then get a little spammy. I have gotten some flash news reports there -- Mumbai, the Macy's rickroll...

Mostly ... meh.

Twitter is microblogging: quick updates or one-liners. A good way to send an interesting link to a selection of work & RL friends. A good way to keep lightweight ties with a range of people. Fandom's been pretty slow to adopt it. My RL friends & coworkers had the Twitter explosion over a year ago, and by now it's just part of their lives, just another app they run on their laptops & iPhones.

The Twitter reposts on LJ are irritating because they're boundary crossing. The Twitter style is the opposite of the LJ style: v v short vs longer, link-blogging vs journaling, 0 think time vs ... well, one hopes for a least a little thought behind an LJ post. Tweets are like soap bubbles. Very low value, time-sensitive, *supposed* to vanish into the ether shortly after they come into existence. Memorializing them on LJ is absurd.

I agree completely with this as Twitter's purpose.

Quite frankly, and this may anger some people, I feel largely the same way about blogging in general. Perhaps it's hypocritical, but I feel like the average blog is such a collosal waste of time, particularly if there's no theme, news, or entertainment content to it. It's one of the reasons I have such a hard time making "regular" posts on my own LJ.

Now I do get the whole social networking aspect, and I've gotten to know people and ideas through LJ that I would not have otherwise gotten, but I can never quite shake that feeling of "My god, we're all just talking about ourselves...CONSTANTLY."

To me, Twitter is just the next step in that evolution, where instead of writing about my largely mundane life once a day or so, I now write about it as it happens, only with the added bonus of awful text-speak grammar to go along with it.

So my basic feeling is that if you have a specific reason to be twittering or blogging, then I guess I can understand it. If you just want to tell me what you ate for lunch or how mean the boss was...I start to question why I'm supposed to pay attention.

Which again, I realize is probably largely hypocritical. Despite my desire to have "content" on my LJ, I've certainly done my own fair share of complaining and reporting on the mundane aspects of my life. I guess the question is just: at one point does it stop being interesting to hear about someone's everyday life? How much of what we do every day has to be reported on?

And how badly does half of the population seem to want to live in a perpetually filmed reality show?

*butts in* Oh my god, everything you've said here: YES.

Ahahaha to the perpetually filmed reality show. That's it precisely!

I use Twitter. I tend to use it to post short updates, i may get into a conversation with it (we had snow here, which is a rare occurance, so we twittered about that a lot.)

Twitter is for the things you want people to know your doing, but aren't big enough for a full post!

The thing about posting your twitters to LJ, it was something i considered, then decided i didn't like, so i didn't do it.

If you should get a Twitter, well i have no idea on that. are there people who twitter, who you would like to follow (e.g Stephan Fry) then it might be worth it.

The thing about posting your twitters to LJ, it was something i considered, then decided i didn't like, so i didn't do it.

I wish more people shared your conclusion.

I wouldn't mind so much if LoudTwitter would just cut those "@personyouneverheardof" direct chat-style messages. True, the updates of one sentence about everything that happened in a day are on the annoying side, but so is half of what's on Livejournal (at a generous estimate). However, reading half of a conversation mixed in with it, particularly when it's "oh i agree" and "what time was that again?" feels almost insulting. That's usually because the most insulting things that I think have ever been said about me (or about most people, probably) are said in private conversations which often go public, so seeing private conversations in that way reminds me of how it feels to be talked about as if I'm not reading it.

Still, if I wanted to read that, I'd sign up for Twitter myself. I have no problem with posting short entries on LJ if I've got that little that absolutely NEEDS to be said at the time, and I don't see why anyone else should, either. If people really feel the need to make random nonsensical automatic posts, there's an LJ toy that does it with Markov chains. At least then, you have to put in the effort to type your username into the tool.

I wouldn't mind so much if LoudTwitter would just cut those "@personyouneverheardof" direct chat-style messages.

Ask your friends that are crossposting those to turn them off? LoudTwitter has always allowed them to be disabled, it really gets to me how few people bother to even check the basic settings. Sometimes the tool messes up, but it's not often, and it really does help keep it sane.

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nidoking.livejournal.com - 2009-02-11 00:29 (UTC) - Expand

Perfect day to ask that question, because I'm desperate to understand the appeal. Not only do I not get the appeal, I don't understand the business model. I was in a meeting the other day about social networking and commerce, and I was as lost as I've ever been.

To me, Twitter, like Facebook, MySpace, LJ, is another avenue to grab your 5 minutes of notoriety -- to make the average contributor feel more connected and thus, more powerful. Retweeting is totally lost on me, BTW.

Twitter is very useful for people who don't 'blog' but instead use the more facebook style of messaging, with little updates on what people are doing and when. Most of the people on my twitlist have a blog (most are fannish, though not all) but the ones who twit most frequently are the ones who feel they never have enough to say for a full entry. I use it similarly, for things I don't want to devote people's friendspage space towards, but still want to say.

At heart, it's utterly useless, narcissistic, and silly. That's agreed :)

But for people who want quick, one-liner style information, it's fun to use.

I have to agree with you there -- I closed my LJ down because I didn't have the energy to come up with enough content to be worth posting. Twitter's good enough for me to broadcast short updates or an interesting web link. Plus, a couple of my friends from off-internet have started using it...

I've been seeing this Twitter thing on my flist and I basically skip over it as well. I remember CNN and FOX News going on about Twitters during the campaign coverage and I still kinda have no clue what the heck it is and figure I really can live without it.

Like Facebook and Myspace...I stay away.

I was a huge texter even before Twitter, so I come at it from the POV of "Oh hey, I can do an LJ style thing with my text messages too!" Instead of only talking about silly stuff that's happening in our RP with

kimera while she's stuck at work, I can throw it at my Twitter and see responses from a bunch of different friends.

I use LoudTwitter to post them to my LJ because, frankly, I don't update my LJ a lot anymore with real posts, but I want to keep something there so my friends who only know me from LJ still know I'm alive and doing stuff, and can start a conversation about it if they like. I do cut mine, so people have the opportunity to scroll on past, and I don't mind at all if they do.

I also know that I can tell Loudtwitter to cut out the lines that are just direct replies to someone else's message, but I deliberately choose to leave them in so they show up in my LJ summary, because I like to read them in other people's twitter feeds! If it makes no sense and it's not remotely interesting out of context, well, that applies to a lot of things on my friendslist - but if it's intriguing enough for me to go "Hey, I wonder what that conversation was about..." then I can click on the little # next to the line, which will jump me to the actual twitter page, where I can see what it was in reply to. Like anything else, there's an effort vs. return ratio that the individual has to decide on, for whether it's worth following.

This is a good point as well.

I know my friends and I used to sometimes send mass text messages about funny/amusing things but then you never got to see anyone else's replies, so Twitter does act like a text-message based LJ in that regard.

Some help came in the form of this article on mashable.com:

http://mashable.com/2009/02/06/social-media-smartest-brands/

Ford, Comcast and other companies use twitter to enhance customer service - -check this bit out about Ford:

Social media can be used to inform consumers in real-time of how a corporation is reacting to events that affect the customer. Transparency in the process and access to constant information can help stop a negative story from going viral.

help stop a negative story from going viral.

Even if it happens to be true, I expect.

This is what I distrust most about this system -- it gives the corporate propaganda machine another way of misdirecting consumer attention to things they want to cover up.

I've never twittered myself (nor do I use myspace or facebook, I might add). And I kind of wish that those I know who do wouldn't go for the "loud twitter" LJ posts. They're not too bad when they're at least cut-tagged, and there is a GreaseMonkey script out there to cut them off your list entirely -- but it apparently only works with some flist styles.

But, hey, on the pro-twitter side, there's the guy who used it to get out of a foreign jail.

I don't get it, personally. I've taken a look at it, but it just doesn't appeal to me. I have a client on my phone that I can use to post to LJ - LJ2Me and even though I get the concept of Twitter, other forms appeal much more to me. Sometimes I'll read them, but most of the time I don't and I don't really feel as though I'm missing anything. Half the time they're directed at other twitterers....

I've come across some LJ's that seem to be entirely Twitter feeds, now, and it just makes me kind of sad, you know? There's no real depth, imo. It's what you're thinking at that moment almost exactly as you thought it, which is cool - but I think that actual entries have their place too, and I still prefer them to the one liners.

I have Wil Wheaton, Stephen Fry, Brent Spiner, Lavar Burton, Doug Benson, and Bill Corbett friended, and I use Twitterfox to follow twitter. Though I post occasionally to it, its main purpose is to make me laugh. Plus I have a few friends who don't have the time throughout the day to journal, but they still want to interact with people and not feel so cut off. Twitter makes that possible. I might remove the feed to my LJ though, mainly because my posts are pretty pointless.

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