Twitter Tools, Tweaks and Theories is a great collection of observations about how Twitter works and how it can be built upon. I’ll be running through these over the next week or so and commenting. Or not.
Twitter versus Del.icio.us versus blog posts
I’m starting to think that my “here’s what I’ve found” items should move from Twitter to Del.icio.us or maybe even Tumblr [no account there yet, will explore soon] and just be summarised here daily. Then Twitter can be just the day-to-day status stuff — which needn’t be archived here at all, but maybe elsewhere.
Are you OK with that one, Mat F?
There seems to be a surge in “RSS aggregator” products like FriendFeed to create a unified “life stream”. But the more I think about it, the more I think “one stream that contains everything” is wrong. It might be fine for archiving — for your needs. But what about those following you? Dumping everything into a single sewer of undifferentiated crap seems to throw the burden of understanding you onto you audience. And all successful media creation is about what the audience wants — no matter what the scale.
It’s better, I think, to separate out the threads into different streams. People can subscribe to the combination they want. And they can choose to view them in the aggregator of their choice.
Business contacts get your business posts. Family and friends get the status reports about your lunch. A select few choose to view the reports of your illicit camel sex. where they want them, when they want them.
Well, that’s what I think today, anyway. What do you think?
Twitter digests are incomplete
I’ve just noticed that the daily Twitter digests are missing some items. Between the end of 14 March and the start of 15 March, for instance, it’s missing my morning haiku and four others: 1, 2, 3, 4. Must fix. Or must I?
Thoughts on Twitter
In just two months, Twitter has become one of my core communication tools. Non-Twitter instant messaging and Facebook have all but disappeared from the mix. Here’s why.
Actually, before that… If you don’t use Twitter, or if you’ve taken a look but don’t “get it”, watch this 2.5-minute video Twitter in Plain English from those wacky Canadians Common Craft. Love their style.
OK, back?
Like the character in the video, I was sceptical about Twitter. Why do people need to know every little detail of my life? Who cares? I said as much to Perth’s Twitterati late last year. But then I actually tried using it — and I “got it” immediately.
Not happy with how the Twitter digests work
Hmmm… No, I’m not really happy with how the Twitter digests are presented. They dominate the website’s home page when in fact they’re very much secondary material. More thought required… but I’ll leave them as they are until I have a better answer.
Twitter digests: an experiment
As an experiment, I’m going to publish daily digests of my Twitter updates. Let me know what you think. If you don’t know WTF I’m talking about, go to Twitter and then look at twitter.com/stilgherrian. The most recent 10 tweets are visible on my website, but I’m starting to do quite a few more than that every day.