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This week in Twitter (Tech?)
It wasn't even 5 minutes into TWIT and Leo started talking about Twitter yet again. I swear if you made a drinking game every-time Twitter was mentioned on TWIT you would be passed out drunk on the floor before the end of the show. Geez, last week they could not shut up about it either.
Comments
If you're at, say, PAX, Twitter is by far the best way to organize large groups of people. It's basically a live, local chatroom for the physical space of an event. There is no better way to form ad-hoc dinner or dance groups, at least among a crowd of affluent 20-35 year old gamers.
Back in the day, tech people would hang out in IRC pretty much 24/7. They would find a server and a channel that they jived with, and always be signed into it. Of course, they would only see it when they were at their computers, but they would stay in it anyway.
What you would use it for, is crowd-sourcing. Sometimes you have a question or idea that you want to bounce around. You could post it in a forum, but it lacks the immediacy of IRC. You could send it by IM, but then you have a bunch of separate individual conversations, rather than a broadcast one.
The problem with IRC was control. You posted something, and everyone in the room could see it. You also saw everything everyone else posted. You had to specifically block or ban people to get just the ones you wanted. You were also susceptible to all the problems of having the channel ruled by autocratic moderators.
Twitter is one gigantic IRC channel. The thing is, by default you hear nothing and nobody hears you. Instead, you specifically select which people you would like to hear, and nobody hears you unless they specifically choose to. Using Twitter for role playing is interesting, but it's really not suited to that. Using Twitter for five minutes is going to give you a really bad impression of it. It's the kind of thing that you don't realize what's special about it until you invest in it.
If you actually have a lot of followers, and people following you, then it can be very powerful. You can ask questions, and get immediate answers from many many people. You can toss up ideas and get feedback immediately. You can post links to things you have made on the web, and drive traffic instantly, possibly creating a wave of re-tweets if you made something good. Likewise, you can develop relationships as you help others.
Really, it's another tiny step towards the singularity.
Sitting on Twitter all day is clearly a huge waste of time. Just as huge as sitting on WoW all day. But having it as an available resource is invaluable. If there is a world-wide chat room, how can you afford, in our society, to not be at least a small part of it?
I hardly ever use Twitter. I also agree with much of the criticism about it, especially Twitter shitter jokes. However, because I have had a bit of experience with it, I can tell you that people who haven't really tried it have no grounds on which to criticize it. Without at least a serious investment, you will not be able to perceive its true nature.
I am not criticizing it, I am just saying that I have no desire to use it.
As I said, Twitter is of no use to me at this point in my life or for the foreseeable future. I am not discounting it if the situation/need arises, but it simply would add no value to my life at this point in time.
Take for example the horse. People already have a need for transportation that was satisfied by walking. The horse improved upon that in an obvious way. Thus, the horse was quickly and widely adopted as a means of transportation. The same as was with the car, the electric light, or the washing machine which were obvious improvements upon the horse, candle, and washboard. People had needs or wants that were already satisfied by other technologies. New technologies that did an obviously better job of satisfying those wants and needs were easily accepted and adopted.
But what happens when you have a technology that satisfies a need or want that is completely new? Try selling a washboard to people who don't realize that their clothes even need washing. They don't realize there's a problem with dirty clothes. They think they have no need for a washboard or washing machine because they don't even recognize they have a need for washing. Imagine trying to sell light bulbs to people who have lived in the dark forever. Imagine trying to sell cars to people who never travel any significant distance.
A person who never travels doesn't know they need a car. They've lived their whole live without traveling, and without a problem. Why would they need a traveling machine? It is very difficult to sell them on such a technology. It isn't an obvious improvement to a technology they already use. Instead, it is a technology that grants them a new ability, an ability not to do things they already do better, but to do new things they don't already do. If you can get someone over the huge hurdle of actually using the car, they will change from being a non-traveler to a traveler, and then they will need the car. If you get the people who never clean their clothes to clean their clothes, then they will change and need the washing machines.
Twitter is not an improvement on an existing technology. Sure, it's part IRC, part forum, part IM, part SMS, but its implementation actually results in something completely new with a completely new purpose. You can't possibly know whether you need it or not until you actually use it. No, it doesn't satisfy any needs or wants you currently have. But it grants you a new ability, the benefits of which are not obvious until you use it. Bashing Twitter is aok in my book. Laconica is a much better implementation, and even that is heavily flawed. I don't even use either one that much at all. However, if you claim you don't need Twitter, but you've never actually used it, you are no different from a person living in the dark saying you don't need light bulbs.
This reminds me of the olden days when Rym would continue using IE because he didn't need tabs in his browser. Time and time again I would adopt a new technology, and Rym would say how he didn't need it. Then eventually he would adopt it. Cellphone that does more than make calls? LCD monitor? I could go on.
The point is that when a technology provides a new ability, you won't know if you need it until you use it. Trying everything and figuring out what's what is a lot better than resisting and being slow to adopt. There's no harm in trying, and you risk depriving yourself of something great.
I never really say no to new technology. I may be ambivalent, but I won't discount something right away.
That being said, I've been doing a sort of "daily Tweet" thing. That way, I end up with something to remember that day with.
By the time I got fed up with it enough to stop listening, I was half expecting "Oh, We have one here from a Mr G. La Forge, saying "Hello Steve, I was having some problems with my friend Data," Hmm, Odd capitalization there, but anyway, "so I busted out my trusty copy of Spinrite..." - Sure, the guy wants to plug his product, but this is just beyond a joke. Holy shit, Somebody get Leo Laporte on the phone, this needs to happen.