Do you twitter? (nrr, although it could be)
waxjunky
1,850 Posts
I'm just wondering about twittering on the Strut. I keep a Twitter account that's affiliated with my blog, and I've found that as a sidebar, it's a useful space for tidbits (such as wine notes) that don't warrant an entire post. Plus, it helps keep things current, especially if I haven't officially posted for a few days. I don't use this app to alert people when I'm doing my laundry or washing the car.http://twitter.com/thirstyreader/Anyone else on the program?
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Twitter Creator On Iran: 'I Never Intended For Twitter To Be Useful
SAN FRANCISCO???Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran. "Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them," said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation. "When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means???such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime???I couldn't believe they'd ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless." Dorsey said he is already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/twitter_creator_on_iran_i
facebook has gone public. your projected life is now officially a commodity.
I'm usually too busy to F*ck with any internet social stuff, but I will admit Tumblr is great. It looks good, and I can update it by texting from my cell!
- spidey
Neither do I understand the supposedly vital function it served in recent event in iran. It's not like there was any shortage of avenues for anonymous people to make unverifiable claims before twitter.
I had the same view of twitter before I started using it. Although there are a lot of digital messaging / blogging apps and sites, the power of twitter is that it's really simple and focused - similar to google. Anyone can set it up in minutes, the # of characters is limited and the functionality is really basic. It's starting to become a vital part of my work (design) for keeping up with what my colleagues (and friends) are up to.
I think perhaps you've missed the social structure that undergrids twitter. That's what seperates it. That and the fact that it integrates with smartphones very smoothly.
BTW, I'm having pizza tonight and go to a party later. Had some friends over for drinkeing coffee and it finally stopped raining. Have to buy food tomorrow and need to file the telephone bills of the last months.
Now was that interesting?
Yeah, it all depends on who you follow. I try to limit mine to funny/interesting info. People post dope links though, cool photos from their phone, et cetera.
twitter got me a grill so that was so worth it
b/w
I haven't bothered to mess with it. I think I'll take this social networking phenomenon off. Holler at me when the next one comes along.
Then, even though I was suspect, I tried it again. This was about a month prior to the events in Iran. After trying it again, I quickly saw the benefit of twitter, when it is widely used. The key is trends, and mining for keywords.
Each individual tweet is useless and unverifiable, so it really doesn't add anything. However, when you have such a large number of people using a service, searching for keywords can give you a heads up that something is going on. Trending topics, or better yet 'TwitScoop', is the key to twitter. When an event happens, an earthquake, or anything really...it shows up in TwitScoop WAY before it is even breaking news on CNN.
You could argue "so what, CNN has to verify sources". That is true, and noone is saying you should take tweets as gospel. BUT, if you see CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKE in huge letters on TwitScoop, you can bet that an earthquake just hit california. I learned about many news events this way.
As for Iran, the benefit is quick news. The problem is verification. Right now, verifiability is left to the reader. However, if you are intelligent you quickly can narrow down who is giving reliable information and who isn't. There were maybe 3-4 people I was following during the heat of the protests that I knew were fairly reliable, based on that when they would announce something it was later verified by major news sources, and they rarely announced anything that wasn't verified later.
I think the future of twitter and news is that someone will make a TwitRate or some such website that allows people to vote on how reliable a given username is on twitter.
-pj
Iran was one, but the Xinjiang protests helped prove twitter's usefulness even more. Again w/ any web tool, it's 99% garbage, gotta sift out that 1%. My lack of patience in sifting through it results in me rarely checking twitter.
Tweeting is still the dumbest word I've heard in a good while.
Twitter is fu[/b]cking stupid, except for shitdj, who is one quality hater.