as i mentioned before, i started using twitter a while ago. but i’m really unimpressed with it. i see a mix of people using it, and for different purposes.
- those who just have conversations with each other, where every tweet begins with @johndoe
- those who just use it to push their own services, where every tweet has a tinyurl.com, ow.ly, ping.fm or is.gd link in it
- those who use it like a digg substitute, with a url as above in it
- those whose tweets are really what the site was intended for, just personal updates.
so far, i’m not finding too much value in any of those. i hear that you get a lot of breaking news first on twitter, but that’s not a key need for me too often.
and by the way, i always heard the story that twitter started as an offshoot of another company, with the core question being a way to tell people what you’re doing right now, which was observed through people’s status updates in their instant messengers. so why can’t my twitter updates actually update my instant messenger status? i have yet to see a tool that updates my status in skype, adium, pidgin, trillian, aim, etc.
Reading about how status updates can over time create this portrait of oneself – perhaps otherwise not apparent? So many apps are connected, I suppose IM/Tweet is coming along any moment. I liked twitter better when I actually knew everyone on my list.
@Josiecat, i think you’re right. i’ve been using the status updates more since i wrote that post, and i do like seeing the flow of notes over time and piecing together the experiences i had.
Is the portrait from status updates one we then need to craft like any other brand – becoming more like #2, or allow to develop unmanaged? Once you start thinking about it’s hard not to have a stake in how it turns out.
@Josiecat, for me, it’s falling mostly into category 4. i can reconstruct big parts of my day by reading back my tweets now. but it’s probably only useful for me, since i don’t really give too much info in them. so no brand management yet