Posts Tagged ‘People’
Some thoughts on twitter and and its people
I’ve been a keen twitter user since mid-2007 and I’ve come to love it for many reasons, all because it is (mostly) real people participating in a big global conversation. Looking back, here are some thoughts on us users and what we do with twitter.
Personal tweets
Some tweets are meaningful: food for thought, or simply expressions of feelings. And we all know it is healthy to be capable of expressing one’s feelings (and to do it appropriately but that is another story)
Some tweets are just random. The overused and abused example of twitter users tweeting what they’re eating is typical of people talking about twitter without knowing what they’re talking about. While new twitterers may resort to mundane tweets when they start off, usage evolves to become something that is much more akin to real communication. If it doesn’t, people tend to not get hooked. Tweeting pizza is just not worth anyone’s while.
Some tweets are vain. People tweet something simply because it sounds/looks good. Some of us tweet the one-liner we wish we had pulled off spontaneously but that always comes too late. If it really is good, it can be a hit, it gets retweeted. It can be RT’d into the twitter viral of the hour, even a trending topic – or reused to become a full-blown internet diplomatic incident of the week… Otherwise, it is a blip with little consequence.
In general, twitter doesn’t suffer from boundaries as much as some other media such as blogs that are expected to stick to a certain type of message: You won’t see a rant about bad fashion at the latest Oscars ceremony on a person’s blog on ethical considerations of medical practices. It might discredit the other entries, even though we are all humans and may wish to rant about it :)
People’s multifaceted character is given free reign on twitter. It gives twitter a nice level of authenticity, which one of the reasons I like twitter so much.
Sharing information, or the human-selected newsfeed
Every person is a filter that comes across a vast, but limited amount of information every day. Some of it is worth sharing. That is when twitter becomes like a multimedia digg but more flexible. It’s multimedia because you can see something interesting and share a picture of it, or you can post a link. It’s not only about the internet; it is about whatever you come across. It is also more flexible because you don’t need to stick to categories, and you can have temporary topics using, e.g. hashtags.
So take a massive group of people, each one tweeting what they find interesting in what they come across every day. The links and information shared by people on twitter is a form of crowdsourced interestingness measure. What a tool! Unlike information whose relevance is decided by a few in, say, media corporations, links and information that people share on twitter serves as a clever filter of information for their followers. It also says much about them. If you share information about a topic dear to you, you end up with a following that shares that interest. At the same time, you can follow people who are experts (as in – well connected) on topics you are interested in, without knowing much.
This is where the beloved serendipity comes in. Someone whose tweets you like may lead you to discover much more. An interesting series of tweets can lead to lots of new things, even new business deals. That again, is due to the acceptance of people’s multiple facets being represented on their twitter feed.
Twitter is a catalyst for serendipity but it is not only because twitterers are exposed to more. I believe that people are more likely to have more than one interest in common with those they started following for only one reason to begin with. Interests and value systems are intimately intertwined and this leads to people finding like minds.
What do you do with @ replies?
Twitter doesn’t have nods – acknowledgements that something was seen but nothing further needs to be said about it. Some feel urged to acknowledge @ replies by @ replying back. No need, this is twitter. Also, beware of not thinking you’re being ignored if you don’t get an @ reply back. An @ reply is not a phone call or even an email. A tweet is like a message in a bottle floating on the ocean. It may have an address (@) on it but it can land anywhere.
Who do people feel the urge to @ back to? It is very dependent on who @’d in the first place. Who would ignore an @ reply from some superstar they follow? Very few. Most would @ back right away, not even to say something but just to consolidate that an exchange has taken place, that the number of degrees of separation has decreased to 0, that there has been a direct contact between them and some famous person.
While this is one of the appeals of twitter for many users, it creates an awful lot of noise out there. And it is an interesting measure of people’s social influence. Some have seen their success on twitter leak into real life, like some have seen their blog turn them into net-celebrities.
Other celebrities (e.g. Stephen Fry, singers, athletes, etc.) must get an awful lot of uninteresting @ replies but for small fry like myself, an @ reply is almost always interesting/relevant/fun.
etc.
There is much more to twitter than this: conference hashtags, using twitter for marketing (ugh!), newsfeeds, high-speed information and alerts during accidents or disasters, supercool science tools, etc. 
The thoughts I’ve tried to summarise here are not about twitter as a tool but about twitter users as real people, because that’s where I find the value of twitter the greatest.
Myself, I’m a bit of an information sharer, a connector (I retweet lots), a vain twitterer (love it when I get retweeted…), and a clumsy conversationalist (…although I don’t always understand why).
Who are you?
I’d just like to share one little tool i like: I use a url shortening service that gives tracking, in my case bit.ly. If you sign up for an account with them, they will tell you how many people click on your shortened link. A bit.ly address also hides what the link is, which can entice people to click even more… :)
Between realities
I’ve just come out of a schizophrenic kind of month. On the one hand, the .Astronomy meeting. New, innovative, fun, diverse, techy, scientific, more fun, hands-on, etc. – you’ve seen the trailer, it says it all. On the other hand, the massive work of writing a proposal for EU funds. Anybody who has been through this process knows how painful it is. Between the daunting bureaucratic nightmare (hmmm…) and the failing software (Oh look, a whole manual on how to write EU proposals in LaTeX! [PDF]), it’s been quite a journey.
Two very intense threads of life intertwined, how did I keep my sanity? :)
Sometimes it feels like we’re in something unstoppable, between layers of reality, seeing a bit of both, and having to go really fast to not lose balance. (Guess which one represents .astronomy, and which one is EU proposal in the picture above)
Well the truth is, I was high on .astronomy goodness. It pulled me through. The inspiration, the energy, the people were so great, and everyone who said it was one of the best meetings they’ve been to added a feather to the proverbial wings that carried me through sleepless nights of proposal writing. It probably sounds cheezy but thank you all the awesome #dotastro people. And let’s hope the .astronomy vibe inspires the referees too! :)
PS: Just found this – weird!
