Twit, Twitter, Twitterer

My first tweet. 568 more have since followed.

One of the best critiques of Twitter came from Ben Buchanan way back in January 2007. That predates all of my Tweets as well as the big explosion of new registrations that came with the South By Southwest conference last spring. Ben mentions two things that are particularly poignant.

First, there is this great summary:

It’s faster than email; slower than IRC (in a good way); doesn’t demand immediate attention like IM and has a social/group aspect that SMS alone can’t touch. It is quite odd, but I can’t help thinking this is a sign of things to come. Communications channels that are flexible and quick, personal and tribal… it’s approaching what I imagined when cyberpunk authors talked about personal comm units. In fact, more recent reading like Cory Doctorow’s ‘Eastern Standard Tribe’ is a little freaky when I consider the disrupted circadian rhythms of certain Twits.

Second, Ben’s disclosure of his initial reaction to Twitter—”The first time I heard about Twitter I thought it was a stupid idea”—is an all too common refrain from those who aren’t using. Almost as common is the change in attitude after trying it for a while, which for Ben turned into a great early analysis of the service.

That analysis identifies some special kinds of uses for the service. Twitter Tours are walking trips documented through tweets. Some people have created accounts to convert RSS feeds into headline posts with links to news. There is also a weather forecasting stream, but I gave up on it when it failed to deliver any weather. While the central idea revolves around status updates, there is a communal chat-like quality to Twitter. Tweets can be directed at specific users with a convention “@username,” which Twitter now interprets with threaded posts. People following their streams closely use the tool as a form of chat, sometimes offering up polls for mass consumption. Twitterers also play games, whether it is tweeting in haiku or playing telephone.

There are additional uses that appeal to commercial, political and academic interests.

Director Greg Yaitanes tweeted during the premier party of the television show, “Drive.” It didn’t help, though; FOX canceled Drive not long after the party ended. Australian Fashion Week used Twitter to promote their event at the start of May, offering a lot of information that reflected what was going on in and around the runways. The Portland Trailblazers are tweeting in anticipation of their #1 pick in the June draft, allowing fans to follow their debate about whether to select Greg Oden or Kevin Durant (btw, 83% of fans want Oden). A few comedians, like Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan, have started using the service. The absolute best use of Twitter is by Not Steven Wright, who regularly offers up a one-liner from the archives of the real Steven Wright.

Presidential candidate John Edwards has been tweeting his campaign (or more accurately, a tech-savvy aide has been posting a few updates). Barack Obama followed suit, tweeting for the first time at the end of April. Accounts have been created for most of the presidential candidates at this point—including Dennis Kucinich—probably to prevent people from assuming a candidate’s name and tweeting in ways that person wouldn’t like. Live Earth, a 24-hour, 9-continent concert to benefit the SOS environmental project, is using Twitter to promote the July 7 event. In addition to music, each venue will showcase the latest energy efficiency practices and be designed to minimize the environmental impact of the concert.

I’ll be shocked if ACM conferences in 2008 don’t each have at least one academic paper about Twitter. This is a great tool for design inquiry, something akin to photo ethnography. There are also numerous applications popping up to allow people to hook into Twitter in unusual ways (). Naturally, there will be some duplication of effort, as is evidenced by Twittervision and TwitterFaces. Because everyone’s tweet streams are a unique combination of friends, there are also some interesting insights waiting to surface from network analysis.

My tweet stream is purposely small and breaks down into four kinds of friends: family, colleagues, new acquaintances and famous people.

I joined Twitter in early March after seeing a badge on Kelly Abbott’s Dandelife blog. Amy and I used our tweets the next week to keep in touch with our respective spring break experiences while she and the boys were in Florida. I’ve used it regularly ever since, buoyed by the addition of Richie and others at the IU School of Informatics. After seeing second-hand the mess that can be caused by having a stream that is too large, I’ve tried to keep my list limited to people I know or content I really want. Twitter certainly isn’t for everybody, but it is for me.

I tweet, therefore I am.