[Cialug] OT: Twitter users?

[Tony Bibbs]

I think the key with Twitter is it is more of a marketing and networking tool.  Marketing and networking of what?  Of your skills, things you have interest in, etc.  Some of us aren't interested in marketing ourselves or in meeting other people which is very inline with the stereotypical "geek" mentality.  However, if you are a social geek and can deal with some of the crap twitter produces then it can be good.  If you do use it my suggestion would be a) don't follow anybody you aren't truly interested in...they'll likely follow you back b) don't "follow" anybody that does more following than has followers.  People who make good posts that are interesting will be followed by more people.  Finally, of course you all know you can unfollow someone at anytime.  Yes, it is noise, sometimes not very well thought out but you can control the noise.  To that point there are a few missing features:

1) Ability to "mute" someone for a period of time.  Right now php|tek is going on in Chicago and I'm not there yet a lot of people I follow are and I've been seeing posts on it all day.  I could care less but instead of unfollowing them just to add them later I have to tolerate it.
2) Ability to turn of SMS globally.  If I'm at work with access to the web I don't need SMS posts (and the bill they can generate) too.

Finally my biggest gripe with Twitter is it is written in Rails.  No, it's not religious...Twitter is a huge poster child proving that Rails apps can't scale (yet).  While I'm admittedly addicted and know the service is free it's always down for short periods of time.

--Tony

----- Original Message ----
From: Josh More <morej at alliancetechnologies.net>
To: cialug at cialug.org; nathanism at gmail.com
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 3:33:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Cialug] OT: Twitter users?

Since I was called out, I guess I'll post.

I'm not a fan of twitter.  I find that it passively encourages people to
share data before it goes through the mental editing process which
results in increased noise in the signal/noise ratio, increased
misunderstandings and more traffic added to an already busy life. 
Moreover, like blogging, there is an echo chamber effect.  However,
unlike blogging, it moves more quickly and isn't as persistent as I
would like.

It can be useful in a personal branding perspective... if you want to be
a twit.  ;)

More seriously, twitter pushes the speed vs quality balance too far away
from quality for my taste.  While it's true that some concepts can be
adequately explored and explained within the character limit of the
service, those concepts do not tend to be the ones you wish to build a
personal brand upon.  It has excellent social uses, if you want to be
100% available in your social life.  It's great for keeping track of
your daily thoughts and wonderful for getting into the habit of taking
notes.  However, those are generally not the sorts of things that I
prefer to share with others, they being a tad too raw for "publishing".

I've seen excellent arguments for other things you can do with the
twitter API and how it's utterly transformative.  However, in the end,
even the aggregated quality of a product is only as good as the quality
that goes into it, and I just don't think it's there.  Quality may
emerge in something of a long tail phenomenon, but we're not enough into
it to see something like that yet.

You all can start flaming me now.  :)



-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701

>>> "Nathan Stien" <nathanism at gmail.com> 05/19/08 1:50 PM >>>
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Nathan C. Smith
<nathan.smith at ipmvs.com> wrote:
> Funny, I always thought of you as being pragmatic.  What value did you
find in Twitter?  I'd like to hear Josh ring in on Twitter as well.

Twitter *can* be pragmatic -- it can help you build your "personal
brand", as blogs and such do.
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