While using Twitter this weekend I witnessed a couple of debates between various Twitter users that I follow. Leaving people and personalities aside, I don’t think that Twitter is a very good platform for debates.
- The 140 character limit really causes problems. You’ve either got to make your point in 26 words or less or else continue a conversation over multiple Tweets which tend to get lost if you have a number of people in your timeline.
- In some cases, I believe that people’s responses were compressed to making a “sound bite” that would fit into the 140 chr. limit.
- The ability to adequately explain a point of view was just not there, particular if anyone watching the debate didn’t understand or appreciate the full context of the conversation.
- Regardless of intent, a number of comments were perceived to be ad hominem arguments, at least in part due to brevity (again, my opinion) and word choice
The thing is, Twitter provides a forum that a lot of people can participate in and thus, if nothing else, it has a share of attention that could be used to have debates of this type.
Maybe it would be worth creating a Twitter debate guidelines document of some kind.
Does one already exist? I’m going to check this out.
I tend to agree on the limitations of twitter as a debate tool still if the answers are not limited in size and the discussions are much longer it could lead to too long a debates to be able to read and follow
i think if you have perfected the art of debating in abbreviations, it’s fine.
P1: IHA (i hate apple)
P2: IDA.AMFC (i don’t agree. apple makes a fine computer)
P1: YJJCYNRRCS (you’re just jealous cos you’re not running a real computer system)
P2: ARCS!!! (apple is a real computer system!!)
P1: NIN!! (no it’s not)
ah, the last one proves a problem, since that could be interpreted as nine inch nails.
until people can debate in abbreviations, best not do it on twitter.
@Heather – I agree
@Jansie – that’s it – an acroynm guide is the answer!
@ Heather – I also agree…
@ Jansie – That is hilarious! We all had a good larf about your mock debate at work here this eve…an acronym guide would be key!
This is a thought provoking post…I have only recently had a debate with someone via IM and even that was frustrating…a lot of cleverness needed to make a perfect point in less than 140 characters…
You know, I still haven’t really gotten the feel of microblogging. The only reason I have been using Twitter is because I have saved the icon on my iPhone and whenever I am waiting for the subway or just waiting in general, I’ll log on. Its rare that I go out of my way to log on. Maybe I just haven’t gotten addicted enough yet.
@sammy_sunshine – Holding a real debate via Twitter would be an excellent challenge, but I believe that a lot of comments exchanged in these “debates” were being presented as self-evident truths, which I didn’t feel comfortable with.
@Kali – Twitter didn’t grow on me until my followers list began to get larger AND when I started making contact with various followers. As the number of conversations increase, the value becomes more evident.
ah, sorry, acronym was the word i was looking for, not abbreviation. sorry, for ruining a fine conversation. IRAS.ISIFBMC (i really am sorry. i shall in future be more careful). hmmm, maybe i should tweet that. in fact, i shall.
[...] I definitely think that Twitter has some advantages as a conversation platform, although as I’ve said earlier this week, I don’t think Twitter is a good platform to hold a debate. [...]