Twitter

Jaiku is a Finnish software that makes conversing with people easy. It’s an advanced form of chatroom and I love it. It works on the same principle as twitter with the added bonus of having feed reading and integration as a bonus. If I’m going out for the day but I want people to know where I am at any given point in time I can send messages to twitter because it’s the price of a local phone call rather than international, as with Jaiku where the message is sent to Finland. I added my blog therefore a summary of blog posts will automatically be added to my jaiku feed. I could add flickr, my video feeds and other feeds if I so desire and it should work. On Jaiku I love how conversations can take place based around posts about what someone is doing. One person talked about only having 5 gigs left on their hard drive and a short conversation followed on from that post. Leo Laporte commented on his twitter identity being ussurped recently and this encouraged a flurry of activity. It’s like many of the Web forums I’ve visited. People join a community and select their friends so that they get updates whenever someone posts. The difference is that there is a migration away from the desktop and laptop to the mobile phone. It’s becoming an integral part of people’s lives. Of course at the moment it’s for early adopters rather than anyone but over time when it becomes more socialy acceptable we should find a progression whereby information workers are no longer tied to their desks.

Claire - Apr 1, 2007

What’s the subject of your dissertation and where do you go to school? Tried to find both bits of information on your blog, and I’m sure its there, just wanted to ask to save some time. Thanks, I enjoyed perusing your blog. Good luck with writing.

I love technology, especially in the form of online communities. I’ve been part of so many online communities I have some degree of expertise. I’ve seen the birth of the chatroom and it’s evolution, the popularisation of instant messaging and through flipside and nochicktrix I’ve seen the forming of virtual communities. More recently I’ve seen the increase from virtual communities to real communities. Over the past two years, almost everyone I know has created a myspace account and for a while, this was the best place for people to be. More recently though people have moved to Facebook. Having more than 140 friends, of which only three I do not know, is a sign of how times have changed. It’s actually fashionable to be part of an online/offline community. All the parties I’ve recently been to have been advertised on Facebook among other places and it’s become the social networking site of choice. If you’re not there you don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s a great shift. It’s also replacing e-mail. Why e-mail people when all your friends are on Facebook. Why not take advantage of unlimited photo uploads to Facebook to add all those past nights for everyone to enjoy. I love the way technology is going. It’s sociable.

Twitter is a global short messaging system that allows people to post what they are doing 140 characters at a time. For the moment it is a relatively new phenomenon therefore it’s not too hard to keep track of the conversations going on. They are also geo logged. As you’re watching people’s messages you can see China say that they’re getting ready for the night ahead whilst in Europe people are going out to lunch. In the US people are complaining about having to wake up early in order to catch their planes, go for walks or in certain cases go to bed. It’s amusing and it’s reminiscent of ten years ago when I spent 13hrs in a chatroom at a time when spending ten minutes online was expensive. it’s cyclical. One thing is popular, then is replaced by something else before becoming popular again. One difference this time is the technology used. Google maps show where in the world people are tweeting from whilst the twitter site simply shows what people have written. It’s amusing to watch the world and what people are doing in it.

Twitter is a short message that are only 140 characters long. It can be used in three ways. The first is by instant messenger, the second is by text messaging to your mobile phone and the third is via the web interface. It’s referred to as microblogging, although not by me. I see it as being something more powerful. The BBC, Google, and other companies have already used it for showing people what the latest news is. Of course, with such a medium you have to be careful not to send too many messages or people will give up. Where it would come into its element is traffic info, radio schedules, or even event notifications. Imagine that you knew about this before rag week and that many of your friends were members. You could tell them “just finished ragging, on my way back to uni” or “only 20 tickets left for an event”. In other words, you can let people know what an organisation is doing quite easily. Another way to enhance this is when you’ve got quite a lot of friends and they’re all members. “Hey, just handed in my assignment, going to sit in the grass outside halls, welcome to join” and many people who might have been bored now know where to find you. Of course, you’re paying the price of SMS (text messaging) if you’re away from the computer but it’s at a local tariff to the best of my understanding. It’s an interesting development, similar to the status bar in many of the current messengers and on Facebook.

The idea that people expose their lives for everyone to read on sites like Flickr, blogger, and many others is a strange one. How often have you seen people partying with their friends yet not knowing a single one of them? It’s a voyeur’s paradise at the moment. I was listening to Net a night with Leo Laporte and Amber McArthur speaking with the creator of blogger, Odeo, and Twitter. Le was talking about how addictive it is and how it’s a mini-blog. It also reminds me of the Facebook status bar. That’s because twitter is about short messages. The messages may originate as easily from a mobile phone as Instant Messenger or the web interface. There are several hundred people who are saying what they’re up to at that moment in time. Examples are “I’m in the queue, third person to the left or “I’m doing housework” and “just got up and it’s a beautiful day. They’re short, instants in time which individuals decide to share. Individuals are not the only ones using this technology. I’ve noticed that google news, BBC world service, and news, CNN, and others are using twitter to share news on upcoming events and current affairs. It’s an interesting way of keeping informed on current goings-on around the world. Due to the nature of the communications, the messages are usually short, to the point, and with Tiny URL. This is because a normal URL would take up all the characters. Another naming convention is the @name concept. When you’re sending a message to a particular friend and you want them to know that it’s to them that it’s addressed @name seems to work. I’ve only been trying it for a little over twelve hours so far though