I Don’t Get Microblogging
The fact that the entire Ubuntu community seems to have dived into this microblogging craze disturbs me.
Actually, “annoys” could be a better word. I occasionally get into this with fiction, like movies and TV series: “Okay, this is kind of decent, but definitely not the masterpiece I was told it is. So what did everyone find in this overrated piece of drivel?” And then I start ranting about it, in the hopes of provoking a discussion and an opportunity to vent.
Technology is sometimes the same for me. A new fad strikes the entire Internet, I fail to see what’s so special about it or what it’s even for, yet the fact that everyone talks about it all the time annoys me enough that I often intervene with complaints that “I don’t get it”.
I honestly tried to get it. I read articles on it, including the Wikipedia one, watched video explanations on YouTube. This diagram, obviously, completely clarified the situation. But seriously…
- Random thoughts? IRC. Saying something that bugs me on an appropriate channel will inspire a more fulfilling response than a mess of short posts ever would. Or I could just write it in my blog — I have nothing against one-liners being there.
- “What I’m doing now”? Well, who the heck cares what I’m doing at the moment? And if someone does care (I can see why my parents and coworkers would, hypothetically, but not beyond that), why would they trace it over the Internet? The fact that someone might actually be interested in reading up-to-the-minute status updates in daily life — and that someone can actually care to update — sounds kind of disturbing by itself. Like virtual voyeurism. This sounds really far-fetched. Using the Internet to trace your son’s meal or finding friends having a party at the moment? Seriously?
From what I’ve seen on screenshots, signal-to-noise ratio of a typical Twitter feed (how do I subscribe to the bloody things anyway? Is it like RSS, via a URL displayed somewhere?) is disturbingly low. You need to trace on the particular service the person is using. That’s just unwieldy.
Maybe I just don’t lead the kind of life where microblogging becomes useful, but then it’s concerning to be different in this aspect from seemingly everyone else in the Ubuntu community.
“I don’t get Twitter” returns 23,500 Google results. For a technology that’s supposed to be simple and intuitive, that’s disturbingly high. Without the “I”, I stumbled onto this phrase: “If you don’t get Twitter [or other similiar sites for that matter], then it’s not for you.” Maybe I should just bitterly follow this statement and disclaim it as “not my thing”?
But dang.
(Added: Someone came to this page from the horrendously designed Planet Ubuntu Twitter page. The irony.)
I’m no twitter fan either; found this very amusing:
http://s2.b3ta.com/host/creative/52745/1235518122/twitter.jpg
Plenty more here:
http://b3ta.com/challenge/twitter/popular/
Cheers, Joseph
Probably a year ago, a friend sent me this link:
http://evhead.com/2008/03/twitter-explained.html
I like it because I don’t do IRC much any more. I’m quite busy so a quick scan of microblogging is better for me than most real-time communications.
I think on twitter, it’s either voyeurism, or if you don’t want to share your privacy, it becomes non-sense or useless talk, or smalltalk…
what’s the point?
I saw that video, maco. That’s exactly what the “voyeurism” complaint was about. :)
I thought Adam Pash over at Lifehacker gave a few pretty good examples of how Twitter is useful: http://lifehacker.com/5207514/six-ways-you-should-be-using-twitter-that-dont-involve-breakfast Most of them apply to identi.ca and laconi.ca-based services as well.
“Nation-wide”? “West coast”? Way to presume where your readers are from. Is the USA some kind of default country?
1. Quite USA-specific. But really, find a thematic forum discussing this specific topics and trace its updates.
2. RSS.
3. RSS again. How can Twitter-based news be a million times faster than conventional news sites? That would require, I don’t know, a millisecond precision.
4. IM. I guess Jabber is suddenly obsolete now that we have this shiny new thing.
5. “…you can all do it via Twitter” <— But should you use it for things it wasn’t designed for? And what ever happened to desktop organizer tools? To Evolution, Kontact, Sunbird, Lightning?
6. Again, find a thematic forum where you’re more likely to get a useful advice than from random subscribers.
I’m not convinced at all. The very fact that he has to list all this shows to me that Twitter is a solution in search of a problem.
I didn’t get it either (and I had tried it and watched videos and explanations), until a friend told me it was the future of IRC and showed me identichat (http://identichat.prosody.im/).
Using groups and tags actually makes it more interesting than just a mess of posts. It’s a bit like IRC, but you don’t need to be on 20 channels when you are interested in 20 subjects. Just join the groups you’re interested to, and the subscribe to the people you’re interested to, and it filters the messages you get. When you have a remark/question that would would usually post on IRC, you can actually have groups or specific people to receive them by using @user or !group, as many times as you want in the post.
I actually find it much more useful than IRC for quick Q&A between big communities, and it’s just as fast. There’s less chances that you’re posts will get lost on a channel.
Here is an example: I have a problem find an SNMP extension for PostgresQL to use in Nagios. I could just post something like :
“trying to find a !postgresql #snmp extension for !nagios”
Who will receive this ? – the people who subscribed to my feed – the people from the posgresql group (if I’m part of it) – the people from the nagios group (if I’m part of it) – people who search for the “snmp” tag in the history
All in all, there are quite a few people who are likely to get this very targetted message, and they can answer me by using the @user feature, while still including the groups in the answer by using the !group syntax.
Why microblog?
Because happiness is contagious.
http://wolfger.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/if-youre-happy-and-you-know-it/
Because it is and isn’t like IRC.
http://wolfger.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/microblogging-and-irc/
Because it can bring a touch of the utterly bizarre to your life.
http://wolfger.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/muppet-sex-dont-say-i-didnt-warn-you/
Just because.
http://wolfger.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/im-blogging-about-og-maciels-blog-post/
Last but not least, my response to David Pogue’s column that attempts to understand Twitter…
http://wolfger.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/out-of-touch/
Voyeurism seems to be endemic these days…. whether it is Big Brother or some reality show, a gossip magazine about celebrities or simply listening to someone’s conversation on a phone whilst on a bus or train… there seems to be a never-ending need to know the most complete drivel about people….
I don’t Twitter/facebook/Myspace etc simply because I don’t care that much about people I have never met to warrant me spending valuable time reading about their mundane lives and ill conceived daily decisions.
1. How is real-time search USA-specific? e.g. http://twitter.com/ginatrapani/status/1765170140
2 & 3. Fair enough. There are some uses of Twitter that can be done using RSS. One thing that’s helpful is that, since posts are extremely short, it’s easier to post about incremental changes and save the big stuff for RSS. e.g. http://twitter.com/segphault/status/1556760355 Also, some reporters actually report breaking news via Twitter before news agencies release it.
4. Sure, you use IM, but what if you’re not at a computer. You can send and receive messages via SMS. Easy to post on-the-go and receive important updates from friends/colleagues. This is one of the most important features. It allows you to communicate with a lot of people very easily when AFK.
5. Sure, desktop programs are great, but what if I’m at the store and forgot my shopping list? Sending an SMS to @rtm will have them send me my list via SMS. I don’t think anyone’s saying Twitter will replace real desktop apps.
6. It’s true that you could probably more get in-depth and thorough results from a forum. But if you’re just looking for a starting point with a quick straw poll, Twitter’s going to be much faster. e.g. http://twitter.com/segphault/status/1304245567
“The very fact that he has to list all this shows to me that Twitter is a solution in search of a problem.”
So the fact that people took a platform and extended it by introducing unique features means that it’s a solution in search of a problem?
I think part of the problem you’re having is that you see Twitter as replacing things you know and love. It doesn’t. It just provides some interesting new means of communication. It’s like arguing 100 years ago that automobiles are a stupid invention because there’s already a horse-and-buggy for the close stuff and trains for the far stuff. And all I’m saying with that is that each is a unique way of doing things with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Twitter is just an IRC room where everyone is ignored by default © someone
how is microblogging any different than publishing your updates on facebook? i see you have a facebook link on the side of your blog.