05 December 2008

Tweet tweet

I've been playing around with Twitter for the last couple of days (the more observant among you may have noticed it's appeared in the Empire of Me sidebar). It's early days yet, but I'm reasonably impressed (mainly because the lovely Patroclus directed me towards TweetDeck, which is a rather less clunky method of reading and organising Twitter updates than the original).

It's good mainly because it is so stripped down - it literally is all about what people/organisations are doing. I'm on facebook too, and what really bugs me there is the extraneous tat that you have to find out about - so and so has fed their pet fish and gained so many star points, someone's scored 500 in a movie quiz...bleurgh.

It's also much broader than facebook, in that you have access to everyone (which in itself raises interesting dilemmas when everyone has access to you - what you post to where, personally and professionally, particularly if you don't have a pseudonym?) It can make for interesting reading (fancy following Stephen Fry? Join the other 26,000-odd people who already do...) or for total tedium. I guess you have to pick carefully. But you get the chance to reply or ask questions of people who might not ever consider reading an email from you, which could be an interesting prospect professionally.

I also like the way many content providers (eg MediaGuardian, or our own more local bdaily) are using it as a news feed - somehow it's easier to read snippets like this (especially via TweetDeck) than it is in Google Reader.

Anyhow, the experiment continues. Here's to minutiae.

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