Twitter

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:

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.

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