This animation comes close to my feelings on twitter... Its really damn funny, Check it out!
I mostly tweet about the futility of tweeting.
The video takes some funny jabs at tweeting, but it misses a big one in my book. I am most annoyed by the fact that twitter sets the new standard of "important thoughts" at 140 characters. I find it nearly impossible to convey all the information necessary to complete a statement in a 140 character "tweet". Take the post I made this morning.
"The moby wrap still works really well to put Jamieson to sleep but unfortunatly its just too hot for he and I to use for very long now."
Now that note is missing some key information! I think Jamieson has inherited my "warm blooded" nature and he seems to get warm fast, and I would also have liked to include the time of year that we are having to stop using it and that we could have used the wrap year round in some place other than the dreaded Texas. Someone reading this out of context might simply think I don't like the something about the Moby wrap... but the opposite is true, I love the thing and I am sad that I have to put it away due to the place I live.
So the choice is to leave out detail or use a Tarzan like shorthand.
"Moby wrap good for putting Jamieson to sleep, but its too hot for us to use for long. March + Texas + Warm baby wraped on warm daddy = bad" (138 ugh)
Honestly, I think that the idea that most thoughts can be fully formed in 140 characters brings us one step closer to ushering in an era of sub verbal grunt based communication.
Get ready.
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7 comments:
That is awesome! "Friends don't just randomly shout into the darkness, and hope someone's listening!" That is why I don't update my Facebook and Twitter every hour like a lot of people do. I'm under no illusions that anyone else finds my life nearly as interesting as I do. If we want to actually connect with our real life friends (luckily, you and I actually have these), we pick up the phone.... or, well, more than likely I send an email these days. (How old school of me!)
I see your point about the 140 character limit. I find it an interesting challenge though... I guess it comes from years of taking classes in poetry and having it beaten into my head to find the most efficient way possible to convey a thought. There's both a good side and a bad side to that, though. It forces you to whittle down your thoughts to the most meaningful kernels... but it also doesn't leave much room for subtlety and nuance.
Most people are not using twitter to write poetry. The overwhelming majority of what people are sending out into the world is hardly noteworthy. Most of it could benefit from a little detail and personal insight lest it become repetitive. When 40,000 other people say basically the same 140 character statement as you about a world event, have you really added anything to the conversation? I have heard many people speak highly of how twitter forces you to think and write in a more concise manner. Well the even MORE efficient thing to do would be to not say anything unless it was unique and something people wanted to hear. All twitter is doing is making the unbelievable chatter and spam of the world more bite sized and more assessable.
Thats not to say that some people are not putting it to good use. But so far, I have yet to see a really good example of it being used as any more than a toy. Mind you my standards for what I would consider "useful" are higher than some peoples. : )
I have some employees who have moved into a building about a block away. I thought we could use Twitter as a way to quickly communicate. So we tried to interface Twitter with Outlook. All that happened was I ended up twittering myself. And I don't think you're supposed to do that at work! In any case, 140 characters means I have to leave out all the profanity.
Carrie,
Why wouldn't you just use IM for that purpose? Seems like in addition to it being a bit more flexible, (message length) it would also benefit from being private. Twitter is the opposite of private. heh.
By the way you can follow Jamieson on Twitter. He tweets under the username "JamiesonScott". : )
We are IMing. You can actually get Twitter to interface with Outlook which is our "official" work communication link. I was trying to make it legitimate because my Exec Dir doesn't necessarily understand that this sort of technology can be useful. We actually made good use of it today. You can imagine though how it might look to someone with out a good grasp of technology how we could be goofing off. I had my tech set us up with specific IM names that are work related. I might learn to Twitter yet if I can follow Mr. Cry Cry Pants!
Ah so, I guess having the IM windows up makes it look like you guys are goofing off and popping tweets off through outlook appears much more official?
Thats interesting... I think I begin to see other potential benefits, it could be sort of like an IM that:
A. Doesn't need to be running all the time... Just tweet and not care if the person is AFK or even if they are out for the day. They will see it the next time they look. (Some IM systems "hold" messages but twitter is based on storing them as opposed to being an afterthought.
B. Interfaces with existing SMS phones?
C. Has a web interface that can be viewed from any browser anywhere.
D. Keeps an easy to access record of all your messages "in the cloud". (Personally I don't care for "the cloud", I think "the cloud" blows damp wind. But others seem to love it.)
Ah, out of madness springs usefulness! How dare you add legitimacy to something I am trying to make fun of! : )
Not to worry. It's still well worth making fun of. As I said in my first post, I kept tweeting myself as everything kept going into a folder that I never saw and I would only see my own comments in the Twitter box on the tool bar. So, in my effort to get it to work, I REPEATEDLY tweeted myself until I decided that if I wanted to talk to myself at work, I JUST COULD because I'm the boss. (This ended in a lot of maniacal laughter coming from my office.) So, you can make fun of me too! ;-)
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