Twitter chatter

[Darcie Tanner]

Whether it be a fad or not, Twitter is everywhere right now and seems to be picking up, wanted by its users or not, visibility and user numbers. People outside the usual tech savvy, easy UI circle are starting to latch on to the 'latest' communication tool. I have heard it on mentioned on several prime-time television shows, including Desperate Housewives.

Most of us can agree that the benefits and use of Twitter are many. Channel 4 has been using the micro-blogging et al. tool to receive questions while filming a live surgery, preferring it to blogging, facebook or texting because it allowed for specific, concise, no waffling on questions. By using a specific hashtag, they were able to go through them quickly, choose the best and get them answered.

Google, one of the major players in the world of web, have admitted that Twitter is making them look bad when it comes to real-time information. I don't necessarily believe this is a bad or wrong thing. If Google is more forcused on accuracy of results versus the speed in which it's pages update, then they should keep doing that. Google and twitter are not the same tool, nor should they be. Twitter is better used to spread Google's results, versus competing.

The story that Twitter has' signed a contract with production company Reveille and Brillstein for a TV show, but emphasizes that this is not an “official” Twitter show' had people in a freenzy yesterday and still today. One of the amazing attributes Twitter has given is that 'celebrities' have become more atainable, real people who converse and interact with us commoners. Now this does have several con's to it as well, especially if you're the celebrity. However, when something is bringing people together, why spoil it by pushing away the celebrities who are enjoying the service. Many of them have already stated if a reality twitter-stalking tv show goes through, they will be immediately deleting their Twitter accounts. Upon reading Twitter's response, it doesn't seem as this idea is actually being planned. However, surely now the idea has been uttered, it won't be long until someone attempts it.

My question is, what will it take to push hard core, early adopters away from tweeting on a regular basis? Too much spam, too many people not giving, just taking or a stalking of your very own?

[Stuart Cosgrove]

On a more positive note and even discounting the cringe-worth names Tweets and Twaves, the Google Wave Twitter integration tool is well worth a agnder. Features include contextual spell checking and live translation. Tweety lets you sign in to Twitter, read tweets from your friends and post a new tweet directly from Wave (in effect you create a new wave that just happens to be a tweet as well; called a 'twave').

[Stuart Cosgrove]

I flip the other way I have a hate/love relationship I hate the 'preciousness' that has grown up around what is undoubtedly a smart micro-blogging technology, but which was greeted as a 'god-like' experience by early adopters.

But that said Twitter is a phenomenal fad - a term I use as the highest praise.

Perhaps the major anxiety I feel about the viral power of Twitter, is that its will undoubtedly divide people along very basic human emotional needs, and they are already surfacing around the 'stalker' controversy. We have seen Ewan McGregor pursuing legal action, Anton Kutcher considering dumping the service, and anxiety growing around the meaning of the term 'follow' as debates about privacy and the public domain intensify.

Many have mentioned spam but other early adopters resistant to the idea of Twitter as a tool for that most 'contaminated' media form, a reality TV show.

Whoopee all is not well in Tweet-land.

But if I'm entirely honest the reason that I have resisted Twitter is much more basic its the profoundly wanky use of the TW letters in the coy discourse that has grown up around Twitter, I think I'd rather die in a raging inferno than go to a Twestival, or Tweet about someone scoring a Twy at Twickenham.

Every sub culture needs and deserves its 'language' but in a hierarchy of sheer awfulness Twitter-argot, is down there with CB radio. That's enough from me rubber-duck.

By the way for further demolition see my numerous posts in praise of this passing fad.

[Andy Hayes]

I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter, and I begin to love and hate it more every day. I love how it's brought me in touch with so many cool people I'd never otherwise meet, but I hate how it's become a showcase for slimy marketers and their thousands-upon-thousands of so called "followers". It's about community and its about engagement, and people seem to have went right on past that and went straight for the numbers.

[Marc Tanenbaum]

"I do get spam requests, but they're so easy to just ignore"

This goes to my point (or rather Jon's) about spammers on Twitter not understanding the real holes. They're huge and one must assume that eventually the "black hats" will identify and exploit them.

[Darcie Tanner]

The spam hasn't really started to bother me yet, and before you say "that's 'cause you don't have many followers' (kidding), I do get spam requests, but they're so easy to just ignore. They don't affect, in general, my user experience with Twitter. I'm still able to function within my built ecosystem and receive not only titillating conversation, but information and answers instantly.

[Marc Tanenbaum]

My relationship with Twitter is uncomfortable at best. At last week's ECM, one of the Jons (Mountjoy, if I recall correctly) was "lamenting" the uninventiveness and lack of imagination of Twitter spammers, given the gaping holes for junk communication which the service provides. As it is, Twitter's abysmal signal-to-noise ratio has me wondering if its virtues outweigh its deficiencies. There may be something of an innovation race here: will the spammers get off the blocks, tipping the value balance, before I figure out how to slim the service into a shape that suits my needs?