I’ve been using Twitter for close to a year now and I’m falling in love with it all over again. It’s like a magical combination of a farmer’s market, a state/town fair, and a soapbox to shout to the world. It’s very tempting to think of Twitter as a never-ending festival of bytes because of the diversity of people, opinions, and sites there.
If you’re not familiar with Twitter, the 140 character communication wonder, a great starting place is Getting Started On Twitter (note: I am a contributor to Touchbase, the Pistachio Consulting blog, so I may be a bit biased, but Getting Started on Twitter does link out to a lot of great resources).
Short bursts of communication is the thing on Twitter. You send quick messages via the Web or any device that can send SMS messages. By adding links to web pages into your Tweets (Twitter messages), you can communicate huge amounts of information with a short message.
I’ve been using Twitter for the better part of a year now. My feelings on the service have varied greatly during that time. As many of you may know, Twitter has had a history of stability problems, either during key events in the tech blogosphere or due to underlying design problems. Early and mid 2008 were particularly trying times.
Thankfully most of Twitter’s stability problems seem behind it. Twitter has removed parts of its service (including Track, much to the chagrin of some power users) and has done other things behind the scenes and the dreaded Fail Whale is a rare occurrence these days, at least in my experience.
My feelings about Twitter have varied through the year:
- I’ve been upbeat about the service
- I held a little contest on Twitter
- I’ve been frustrated about the service (see the Fail Whale link above)
- I’ve been pragmatic about what we can expect from a free service
- I’ve been cynical about being a Twitter user
And so on.
I’m back to being more positive about the service when I say that I think of Twitter as a never-ending festival of bytes:
- Lots of interesting people there
- It’s a way to get access to an incredible stream of information
- It’s VERY easy to use
- It’s a way for me to promote both my own work but, increasingly, the good things that other people are doing on the Web
- It’s fun
Twitter isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Moreover, if this was happening in the real world I wouldn’t enjoy the experience because I’m not a fan of crowds, at least in large doses – it’s the way I’m wired.
Fortunately, you can jump in and out of Twitter as often as you like. Plus, it’s always on.
After a lot of different thoughts and feelings, I’m back to enjoying Twitter again.
How about you? What do you think of Twitter: good, bad, or indifferent?
NOTE on Dec. 17/08 – you might want to check out this longer post on Twitter followers, including dos and don’ts.
I also still <3 twitter, but your comment about diversity made me think, because it seems more like many similar people who are slightly different. It still often feels like 90% of the people on twitter are promoting something (if not themselves). I also say this because most of the people I know have no idea what twitter is. And these are people who are more social than I am and use MySpace, Facebook, etc.
Fair points on diversity. It's hard to say whether or not Twitter will have the ubiquitousness of Facebook/MySpace and, on the surface, it doesn't seem likely. It's quite true that most people don't know what it is, but it's growing, although perhaps not as explosively as FB and MySpace.
It just occurred to me Twitter might spread faster if pictures and images were more prominent somehow.
The one thing I have most appreciated about Twitter is the ability to connect to people from so many different fields. My twitter network includes education technology people, teachers, marketing gurus, creativity and innovation types, and a random assortment of characters. This breadth, and the ease at which it is possible to obtain, is a wonderful characteristic of Twitter.
Well put.
[...] Twitter is a never-ending festival of bytes [...]