Aces Full of Links

Using Twitter

When I was in college, my friends and I would log into the mainframe to send mail, do work, play games, write, etc. We didn’t have the internet back then, but we somehow kept ourselves busy.

When you were logged on to the system, people could recognize you by your user name. But each logon also had its own process name which could be used as a nickname, or a message. This was my early introduction to electronic social networking.

Instant Messenger comes with a vaguely similar feature called “away messages” which some people use heavily while others pretty much ignore. The folks who use it, usually use it to leave a message for their friends. “See you at 99’s” or “I’m trying to work!” or somesuch.

The idea of Twitter is to give people the ability to leave an “away message” any time; not just when they’ve turned their IM off. Also, as people splinter off into different IM services and clients, non-immediate messages suddenly need a less proprietary and less tied-down place to live.

Twitter is a whole service based on leaving short messages on whatever you’re thinking about instead of long blog posts. It keeps a running log of those messages. So, if you and your friends join, you can quickly see what people are thinking about/talking about. You can warn them not to waste their money on that new movie you were talking about. You an tell them you’re going to be hanging around at the local pub. You can tell them something silly.

I’ve never been able to get into away messages, mainly because you have to leave your chat client running for them to be visible. I don’t like to leave my chat client running, and I often forget to set the away message. There are tools that can integrate Twitter with your browser (twitbin , for Firefox) and there are Twitter client apps.

Other things to know about Twitter:

• They call the messages “tweets.” I guess that’s better than “twits.”
• You can see everyone’s tweets, or just those of your friends.
• You can post URLs.
• You can set it so that only friends can view your tweets.
• You can update your current tweet by sending a text message to 40404 once you’ve associated the phone to your account.
• You can either receive your tweets via the web, via phone, or via your IM client.
• You can also send tweets directly through the website, from your phone (text 40404), or through your IM client.

There is a trend, apparently, toward smaller versions of blogs. Linkblogs have been around for a while, but Twitter is rather like a tiny cooperative miniblog; especially if you look at the time line. Tumblr is another service that allows people to have a tiny blog with an RSS feed. But Tumblr lacks some of the social and connected aspect of Twitter.

I like the idea of having a smaller blog for logging stuff that is just going by on your mind. It’s like having your friends nearby, but it’s not as intrusive to them as IMs are. You don’t demand their immediate attention.

The problem, as with all of these things, is getting a critical mass of people using it.

Apparently, there are quite a few people who are crazy about Twitter. I’m undecided, but willing to give it an extended try.

So, if you want to see my “away messages” don’t look at my IM anymore. Look me up at Twitter.

Posted by James at May 7, 2007 2:39 PM
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