This is a plug, I can’t call it anything else. But it’s a well-meant one.
Last night I checked out Twitter for the first time. I had been avoiding it like the plague until now. It just seemed the place for disclosure-junkies like Scoble and other bloggers. And even though I disclose a lot online, more so than I ever did before, I’m a firm believer in keeping part of my thoughts private. So I thought that Twitter was not for me. I’m sure many feel the same way.
But last night, I checked it out. For semi-professional reasons. Fidji Simo, from the Techiteasy-team, suggested installing a Twitter-widget on the blog, in which we could share insights. It adds a new dimension to the idea to me, that of a hive-mind.
A blog, even a shared one, is fairly static. You can’t accurately portray that words are merely a snapshot of evolving thoughts. All of us on this blog believe that, just read our disclaimer. What we write now may not apply tomorrow, or even in 5 minutes. It’s just the mind processing thoughts into words.
Twitter adds a dynamic dimension. You can quickly form thoughts (in less than 140 words…argh!) and people can respond to them. Feeling like X sucks or Y rules? Write it and your friends will correct you if you’re wrong. It’s a hive-mind , much like for bees and ants, but instead communicating with smells or pheromones, we do so with thoughts. And instead of one-to-one or one-to-many, the communication goes many-to-many.
Streams of consciousness indeed. I don’t expect that something like Twitter can ever replace blogging. Sometimes you need a bigger workspace to express more complicated thoughts. But it makes a good complement, I hope. Therefore, expect a twitter-badge on this site in the near future.
Some last words on the nitty-gritty. I find this whole 140-word limit frustrating, but also refreshing. You are forced to describe what you think concisely, in short bursts. No wonder that VCs like this medium.
There are a number of ways to publish your thoughts. You can do it on twitter.com, via the web-interface. You can download a number of tools for whatever OS or mobile you’re on. And you can do it via software you may already use, like instant messengers. The downside with that is that it doesn’t tell you you’re over 140 words, until it’s too late. A last way that I adopted is via Quicksilver on the Mac. This applescript allows me to post to Twitter and gives me a warning if I’m writing too much. Too bad that doesn’t happen on this blog, but you can of course always write me a critical comment. 
Related stories:
Technology Review: The rise of the mini-blog
National Geographic: Swarm theory
Vincent is a Twitter-n00b and a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement, on his site, or on his fairly empty twitter-page.
I find myself oddly drawn to Jaiku instead. I think it’s the RSS feed-thingie that might the reason. Not only could I express my stream of consciousness, but the strange people who’re oddly interested in my every-day internet life also see what links I’ve put to del.icio.us or pics to flickr and so on.
What I also find interesting is how Jaiku is trying to reinvent IRC with it’s new concept of Channels.
Unfortunately Jaiku seems to share the problem of Jabber (vs. MSN), no-one’s on it =)
Comment by Kari — July 14, 2007 @ 11:19
Kari, I’ve been on Twitter since beginning of March 2007 – and kept on reading feeds through RSS! I acknowledge Jaiku is slightly better than Twitter, but there’s so much more people on the latter. Come on Twitter!
Comment by Jeremy Fain — July 14, 2007 @ 12:03
Jeremy, I’ll try to avoid the dark side (Facebook and Twitter) as long as I can. I think I’m spread too thin already with all these last.fm’s, linkedins and whatnots.
As I wrote in a blog post here sometime ago, the power of Twitter is its simplicity. It’s built around a neat, simple idea (what are you doing now?) and that’s really refreshing when everyone else is building huge platforms (Facebook). Yet, this is so cool: http://jaiku.com/channel/techiteasy (it’s like IRC, but on stereoids!)
By RSS I mean that as far as I know, you can’t add any other RSS-feeds into your “stream of consciousness” like in Jaiku (in above, the channel subscribes to this blog and on techiteasy-tag on del.icio.us).
Totally off-topic and a strange stream of consciousness I probably should’ve written on Jaiku/Twitter but it’s longer than 140 chars (maybe this should be on a Tumblr blog? aarrrggghh) Anyway, you know, I now started to think about this strange dichotomy between all services. Twitter vs Jaiku, GMail vs Hotmail, MSN vs Jabber, Reddit vs Digg, Myspace vs Facebook… where are the feasible third (or fourth) players?
I’m tempted to blame the two-party system of US for this tendency. Odd, isn’t it?
Comment by Kari — July 14, 2007 @ 12:49
I am so glad to have converted you Vince!
Comment by Fidji SIMO — July 14, 2007 @ 18:12
Kari, please explain, what is the Tech IT Easy Jaiku channel? Thx.
Comment by Jeremy Fain — July 14, 2007 @ 19:26
Jeremy, I set it up to actually get that answer myself. It’s a community page in a way, that right now it subscribes to those two RSS feeds I mentioned, but also any user can write a message, “jaiku” or “tweet” there. It’s a bit like the techiteasy account we have on del.icio.us, only that it’s not a hack.
I’ve no idea what the function really is. The Jaiku people don’t have that much documentation up. Basically they just a had a news item that “Hey, Channels are in beta and they’re cool. Try them out.”
I’d expect Twitter would implement something alike in a near future.
Comment by Kari Silvennoinen — July 14, 2007 @ 20:13
Thanks for the great insights Jeremy and Kari. It certainly inspired some future topics!
I have no clear answer on the Jaiku/Twitter choice. Go where you think you can get the greatest benefits, not necessarily the most features!
Comment by Vincent van Wylick — July 15, 2007 @ 12:10
Vince, what the heck is this? http://idreamofpigeons.tumblr.com/
Comment by Jeremy Fain — July 15, 2007 @ 22:34
It’s my tumble-log where I post interesting quotes and links, my own thoughts, and sometimes rough drafts before I post them here.
It’s fun and highly addictive, but nothing I plan to use to take over the world.
Comment by Vincent van Wylick — July 16, 2007 @ 00:12
Actually, something like a techiteasy-channel is desperately needed, at least if we want to form a TIE hive-mind… I hope that Twitter adds it, or else, we’ll stream the rss-feeds to Jaiku.
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