Making The Case For Twitter, More Or Less

Copyblogger puts it quite persuasively (if unintentionally):

On November 19th, 1863, popular orator Edward Everett gave a two-hour speech that nobody remembers. Following Everett, President Abraham Lincoln stood up, delivered 269 words now known as the Gettysburg Address, and sat down. Lincoln’s two-minute speech is regarded as one of the greatest in American history.

Vaspers the Grate continues to drive this point home, as well.

My mom always said, “If you can’t say it in 140 characters or less (fewer...let’s talk supermarket checkout lines), it is probably not worth saying.”

Perhaps that wasn’t my mom. But she’s into the simplicity thing, too. Especially when it comes to food. Mince words. Eat chicken.

Brevity(ness) is next to Godliness.

This post is too long already.

Twittering Paris And Celebrity STDs

A suite of Twitter tweets from earlier this week

Am I the only one who thinks it's wrong to make fun of someone for having an STD? How sick to plaster all over the paper "VD-Day" for Paris.

I mean, sure she's lame, and she's famous for doing practically nothing. But turn the glass around - what if it happened to you? Not so cool.

Same goes for anorexic girls like Nicole Ritchie. A comic today had her skeletalish trying to get into the jail that made Paris lose weight.

Making moral judgments of any kind about a disease (even one brought on by a lifestyle choice) hurts others who suffer with it in silence.

(Yup, that was me defending Paris Hilton)

It Gets Worse

Before it gets better.

Right?





Damn, I should’ve Twittered this.

Twitter Insights

Here’s a taste of some of the interesting conversations, insights, and debates I’ve had on Twitter lately (yes, naysayers, that does happen). I’m just putting the messages I sent, partly because I think it reads clearly, partly so I don’t accidentally misrepresent a fellow Tweeter, partly to bias things in my favor (clearly), and partly to entice you to check out and explore the site.

On The War (with PeoriaPundit, whose side you can read here - you might have to go back a couple pages to find the relevant Tweets, which will read “@frivmo”)

Pardon my saying so, but "voted against supporting the troops" is a pretty far-from-balanced way of putting things.

The other side would say "Voted to support a bad war and allow a dictator President to have his way." Both are posturing. Both spin.

As consumers of filtered news and media we need to learn how to peel away hidden biases and examine our own sub-unconscious shading of truth

Strongly disagree with you there. The troops are being killed. More money is not gonna stop that.

We need real solutions. Continually throwing money at a sinking ship doesn't solve a thing. Someone has to say enough.

Congress gets to determine war policy. They've let Bush take control, and that's where there's a problem.

It's incorrect to assert that those who don't want to keep paying are against the troops. Not true. Please - that's absurd.

Agreed on supplies. Don't think signing any and all spending bills is answer. Congress needs to do more-make better bills.

Just because Bush threatens to veto doesn't mean Congress can't stop being lazy and come up with a solution to override him.

I'd like to see compromise for the sake of our troops. Rather than fight about funding/not - fight about how to bring home.

One more before bed - Obama et al voting against (when it clearly would pass) is a symbolic gesture we need to start changin'

On Web Design (with Vaspers, here)

Candid admission from a web designer: Not one of my past clients' sites has received the traffic my blog gets in a week. In their lifetime.

They want a site, but think it will work without any effort. No consistent updates, no evangelism. None have used blogs I made for them.

No links in, no links out, no SEO, no community involvement, no email signatures, badges. Any wonder why none of them sell their products?

If you're making a website because "everybody needs one," and don't plan to use it daily (at least weekly), you're wasting money and time.

Would you spend hundreds/thousands on a print campaign and then keep all the postcards in your dresser? Buy a banner and never hang it?

"Build it and they will come" only works when there's something to see, something to do. Something that loudly says, "Yes, we still exist!

Too many companies/artists/craftsmakers looking for the magic solution to their failing products/career. The Web != Lord & Savior.

Question for web pros: Is it unethical to take work if you know the client will be wasting her money? What if you try to persuade otherwise?

On Facebook, MySpace, and the future of the Web (with Christian Burns here)

FB/MS are the flavor of the month/year/generation. Users tire, grow older. New kids find cooler stuff. The circle of life.

These sites have value in terms of entertainment and adverts to youth market, but aren't for "grown-up" networking, pro functions.

MySpace/FB are not like Google/MS/Yahoo - they are niche (giant niche) sites. Biggest value is users, who'll migrate to new & better things.

We'll see them awhile longer, bc their communities are so large, but newer, more open & professional sites will replace 'em.

Exactly right. But are kids still using Geocities, though everybody did? Nope. The Next Gen already thinks MyS is lame.

Time will tell if MyS and FB will change/grow/remain relevant to the next wave of users, or if they'll die at the hand of the New/Cooler.

You might be able to tell from the above (even without reading what came between) that Vaspers agreed with me, and PeoriaPundit and Christian Burns didn’t. In spite of the disagreement (and the fact that I had never “spoken” to either of them), the conversations never turned nasty - not even coming close - and both ended quite amicably. In fact, if scheduling works out, the Burns, Vaspers, and I might have a conference call in the coming weeks (recorded and published in podcast form by Burns) to further discuss and debate the Facebook/MySpace issue, which would be pretty cool, and my first experience with something like that (not counting the couple times I deejayed for a local radio station while in high school).

I’m looking forward to it, and to more great stuff to come out of Twitter in the weeks and months to come. Slowly but surely, a growing community of users are building Twitter’s reputation as a great new platform for varied, deep, and civil conversation, debate, insight, and link-sharing - in stark contrast to the Twitter that’s so often mentioned and denigrated in the media these days. It’s better than they’d have you believe. Much, much more than frivolous cat-blogging.

I’d love for you to join us.

Web 2.0 Really Sucks Sometimes

Fellow blogger and Twitterer and leading warrior in the field of blogocombat Steven E. Streight (Vaspers the Grate) has been on a tirade (I use this in a positive sense) lately against the insidious usability errors prevalent in far too many of the sites and web applications that are being called Web 2.0. If you thumb through his Twitter archives (beware: it’s addictive, once you find some folks who actually make quality updates), you’ll see a lot of great insights about what’s missing, what’s broken, and what just sucks.

He has also come up with a list of 20 of the top problems with Web 2.0 and written it up (long-form, like the good ol’ pre-Twitter days) on his blog. Here’s a taste of one of his points, relevant because I tend to talk about Facebook rather often on this site, even though I use it extremely rarely:

(7) insufficient input choices

Example: on Facebook, when you add a Contact or Friend or whatever the hell they call it, a panel appears, asking you "how do you know this person?"

But there possible answers provided are leaning toward casual friendships, school, and romantic entanglements, making it like the MySpace toilet. There is no "met via blogging" or "on another social networking site". So you have to select "met randomly", then a text entry box pops up, so you can explain what you mean.

I’ve run into this issue often as well, and think it’s just plain stupid not to give more choices. It’s trivial coding-wise to add more, and now that the site is open to more than just college students, it’d be nice to have some more “adult” choices.

He calls me out for using the handle Frivmo on Twitter, instead of my real name (Kevin M. Keating because there’s too many wellish-known Kevin Keating’s to fight against in Google - though I’m currently ruling Spock) or company name (Which one? The one that’s just my name that gets used when I do taxes? Frivolous Motion, Deliberate Motion, cakeeating, The Vino Tinto Love Song Band? I admit I haven’t done the best job branding up to this point, because I’m still working out how each of my different businesses/services/portfolios need to interact. I have reserved the Frivmo domain name, which just so happened to be available, even at a time when seemingly every pronounceable 5 and 6 letter “word” has been scooped up for use by some “jumping on the bandwagon” startup, and I do plan on building this brand in one way or another. Just haven’t gotten there yet, unfortunately.), but I’m not sure he’s doing it just as an example of a nickname, or because he really thinks it’s a bad choice. I could see either being true.

In any event, he is right about that point - that companies need to make it easy for users to find them all over the Web - though another of his points (about the failure of many web services to provide short, readable, guessable URLs) gets in the way of that on occasion.

The important thing running through all his points is an assertion that things just need to freakin’ work properly. Not a single request is unreasonable. Not a single point adds cost to a project. These are all things that ought to be a given. The Web has been around over 10 years now - there is no excuse to fail to do these things.

His conclusion is perfect:

All these problems, annoyances, and headaches could be avoided by running user observation tests on 4 to 8 typical users.

Instead, they slap the crappy "Beta" label on it. Beta means screw the users. Beta means mediocre, "don't worry, be crappy" garbage. Beta means they're too lazy, stupid, or cheap to do code testing and usability analysis on their products.

Seriously. If your site works less well than MySpace, you are in really bad shape.

Link, in case you missed it up there.

The Problem With Twitter

The problem with Twitter (yes, there is only one) is this:

As long as phone companies charge outrageous fees for text messaging (even paying the flat fee for unlimited messages is more expensive than it ought to be) Twitter will be unable to reach across platforms as seamlessly as it is intended to. A major piece of its functionality is too much of a luxury for most to afford. As it works right now, conscientious Twitterers (or those who have received their first phone bill since signing up) know to turn text updates for the cell phone off. In fact, I never use my phone to Twitter because I haven’t added a texting package and don’t feel like doing so until I get my iPhone (still trying to figure out how). That such a huge, integral feature of the application is restricted to those who can afford the exorbitant fees for texting reduces the chances Twitter has of becoming a huge success. Without the ability to cheaply (read: freely) use Twitter on the go, it is, in effect, no more than a minimally-featured microblogging platform or a slow group messaging client.

Twitter’s real value comes in its ability to reach across platforms and devices, but until someone forces the cellular phone companies to offer sensible data plans, there can be only one true answer to the question “What are you doing?”:

Sitting at the computer.

Twitter Networked Performance 2

I Twitter You.
You Twitter Me.
Neither Of Us Knows About It.
But The Whole World Might.


Twitter Networked Performance 1

So It Goes

“Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.” - Kurt Vonnegut on Web 2.0

See - even he knows why we like Twitter.


So it goes, indeed, Mr. Vonnegut. So it goes, indeed.

Twittering In The Rank Sweat Of An Enseamed Bed

If Twitter were a little more reliable, we could:

Create networked performance wherein each actor speaks their lines to voice-recognition software in real time, converting their speech into text that is sent, through their Twitter account, from remote locations. Then, via RSS feed, these memorized texts could be picked up in the performance “space” by a device “following” their accounts which would convert each individual Twitterer’s “tweets”(lines), as they are received, back into the actor’s voice (each having previously recorded all of the individual words in the play) using text-to-speech technology. The speech-to-text conversion may be imperfect; the resulting text-to-speech conversion creating oddly disembodied but recognizably human voices.

Add to this mix the possibility of members of the audience (including a web-only “audience”) choosing to “follow” the main performers, and having their own accounts added to the feeds upon reciprocation of the “friending”, enabling the audience to comment, or quote, or provide links (they may be googling all along) and context - projected on a large screen or wall, or also converted to speech in any, or multiple, voices (of which only the sound levels may be controlled by a technician).

We get a cool, connected work of collaboration and chance, made possible by the digital age and the openness of the underlying technologies. The freedom to exchange data, remix it, reconstitute it, and use it to populate future programs and devices offers a allows us to completely reimagine performance as an inclusive medium. By allowing and encouraging global participation in the shaping of a performance event, suddenly Shakespeare’s Hamlet suddenly becomes Everyone’s Hamlet. Voice, distance, connection - heck, even humanity begin to be redefined.

But will it be fun to watch? That is the question.

Twitter Talks About Itself

The above pic is a screengrab from Twitterverse, a site that makes a fancy little tag cloud of the most-used words on Twitter. The most used word, by leaps and bounds is, in fact, “Twitter.” It seems the self-love is still going strong and the novelty has not yet worn off. But competitor Jaiku isn’t doing too shabby in the cloud, either, and even I signed up for an account there, yesterday. (Yes, I realize I say that as though I don’t join every little site that asks for my email address, thanks.)

Posting Will Be Light Today

I am at home, recovering from some random sickness, so posting will be light, as advertised in the title. I plan to try to get something up this afternoon, but in the meantime, you should check my Twitter, as that is quite a bit lower-impact than actual blogging, and I should be able to update it regularly.

What I’m doing today, for sure, is following the development of the Kathy Sierra story I wrote about yesterday. You should definitely keep an eye on this, too, as it is becoming more and more complex as major players begin to respond. And not all with apologies.

Have a good day everyone. I hope the weather is beautiful where you are, and that you can spend some time outdoors to appreciate it (as sick as I am, I absolutely need to get outside to experience the near-80-degrees it is supposed to be in NYC today).

I Just Joined Twitter

After holding out for no reason for months, I have broken down and signed up for a Twitter account. I’m happy with it so far, but still getting the hang of it. You’ll notice I have a little Twitter widget in the sidebar of this blog (as long as you’re not reading this in an RSS Feed). This way, you’ll always know the answer to that oh-so-important question: “What am I doing?”

I’d love it if you signed up, too, and became my Twitter friend!