Twitter is useful
For some, Twitter just seems weird at first glance. Why would anybody sign up for a microblogging system with a 140 character per post limit? I personally had no hesitation, because I could see it as a variation on the always-open chat room, the kind of virtual coworking space that so many Open Source projects have used, often hosted by Freenode’s IRC servers, at least until Campfire came along. Twitter is kind of like chat, only instead of a chat room you have a chat network – you don’t see everybody in a particular virtual space, but all the people whose posts you choose to follow, often people in your own social network, some of whom will follow you back. You’re in a conversation that can vary depending you who follow… and it can be even more complicated, with a public comment feed and people who opt out of it, and protected private feeds that you can only follow with permission, and direct messaging that’s one to one. If many people you know and work with are on Twitter, that can be useful. If you have problems that collective intelligence can solve, Twitter’s useful there, too.
Marshall Kirkpatrick posts about Twitter for journalism, where it’s useful for picking up on stories as they occur, for performing ad hoc interviews, and to get feedback on pieces you’ve written. I’ve been using Twitter as a matter of course when I write articles, asking questions of the people who follow me and working pretty effectively with the responses I get. Kirkpatrick quotes Suw Charman-Anderson: “No, it’s not a random sample. But since when are ‘man on the street’ interviews?”
If I could just get all my clients and colleagues to use Twitter, it could be one stop shopping for ideas and productivity.
