Twittering, Revisitied

Posted on 26/11/2011 by Adam

It’s been just over a month now since I started tweeting. I came out of discussions at work and thoughts I had about promoting my site. I didn’t know much about micro-blogging, and I felt my opinions were strong, but my knowledge too weak.

I think it’s fair to say I have immersed myself in the world of twitter enough now to give a more balanced view on the subject and how it has changed my digital life.

I am happily following public figures, comedians, sports men, MP’s as well as friends for a few weeks and keeping track of what they have to tell me. But I soon found out it’s not all about what you follow, but what you can search.

Searching on twitter seems to fall into two categories. You can search for posts and people who might interest you, or you can search for hashtags.

Hashtags are really interesting. People use them to join debates on twitter, or follow public mood on news events. They also use them to discuss what’s happening on tv programmes, and public events. I’ve found that twitter brings me news loads faster than the sky and the bbc. Twitter is even faster than google.  Just have a look at what is trending on twitter right now…

Most news organisations need to write a story, get it checked out by a subeditor, then hit the publish button. However in tweet land, every individual can write a report and send it. Anyone can create a hash tag too.

But twitter is an individual’s take on a subject. Not a balanced BBC view. So sometimes they are highly positive, sometimes negative, but you can bet your bottom dollar the next tweet is different!

I was at a conference last week where lots of people in the room were tweeting about the presentations. A bit rude to be on your phone? No. Many of the presenters embraced it. It gave the audience an unobtrusive feedback channel. Some even expanded on a section of their talk because of tweets from inside the room.

I’m starting to lose my way with Facebook. FB security setting have been trying to make us share more with the people outside of our perceived community for years now. We all know what they’re up to and attempt to lock ourselves down, keep people out. Twitter is public by default. That means for those of us who are cautious about how people see us, we consider each tweet. Some how on FB I think I’m in a safer environment, but I’m not. Sometimes the most restrictive permission is ‘friend of friends’. That’s still someone I don’t know!

I like the mix that google plus gives me. The ability to group people together easily, and let different groups see different things. I can post ‘gweets’ as I like to call them too. But nobody is on the platform. So what’s the point?

I think for the main part. Twitter is ticking all my boxes at the moment. Except for perhaps one. Galleries. But I could always resurrect my coppermine gallery I guess.

What do you think about twitter? Why not comment?