I started using Twitter about 2 weeks ago. Before that I thought Twitter was a silly thing. Why would I want to post “what I’m doing” at any given moment?
However, a handful of people whose blogs I follow began migrating more and more of their commentary to Twitter. In fact, one of them retired from blogging and only uses Twitter now. Thus, I started an account so I could follow these few people.
I soon came to recognize Twitter for what it can actually be used for – micro-blogging. It’s not just “status updates” as used by teens, tweens and soccer moms – but a viable communication platform for short thoughts and messages that would often go un-written, un-shared, un-communicated (pardon the poor grammar) because traditional blogging (if a 5 year old concept can be considered traditional) needs more content than a single sentence to be bothered with.
To post a blog entry it needs at least a title plus a paragraph.
With Twitter, you just need the title.
Thus, the sharing of thoughts, ideas, quotes, links etc all become more natural because there is less friction in doing so.
As I commented in an earlier post on “Speed of Thought“, if something has friction, it it less likely to be used or performed. The same with sharing of thoughts and ideas.
Blogging reduced the friction greatly from the techniques before it, and Twitter (or micro-blogging more generically) appears to be doing the same for a realm of communication previously not very feasible to attempt.
I have posted 83 messages in 18 days since starting – some benign, others more thoughtful. A mixture of personal and professional.
I do not see Twitter as a replacement of blogs. I see them as very compatible mediums that mix together to create a stream of thoughts and ideas – to be shared and create dialog. In fact, I have mixed them now on this blog as shown by the Twitter feed in the right column, providing a single place to find my thoughts – both those well thought out and edited as blog entries, and those more “sound bite” sized from Twitter.
Despite my views on the subject just 3 weeks ago, I now think Twitter is a valuable addition to our communication toolset alongside email, RSS and blogs.
If you’re still questioning the significance of Twitter and think it’s just celebrities, teens and tweens, check out some of the following which are a few I follow:
- (CNN Breaking News) https://twitter.com/cnnbrk
- (Reuters News) https://twitter.com/Reuters
- (Al Jazeera News) https://twitter.com/AJEnglish
- (Application Architect) https://twitter.com/martinfowler
- (Enterprise Architect) https://twitter.com/mcgoverntheory
- (Data Center) https://twitter.com/Rackspace
- (USA White House) https://twitter.com/whitehouse
- (Muse – a great band) https://twitter.com/musewire
The fact that companies, news agencies and governments are using the medium for instant communication – not just personal friends – is an amazing convergence of parties making the medium that much more powerful and useful.
Communicating and staying in touch with so many diverse parties has never had as little friction as this.
