Maybe I’ll have ‘What now?‘ carved into my tombstone. It’s an ever-relevant question, and someone might even smile at it if they thought it was the last thing some dead guy wanted to know. Which it would be.
Now, after Doug Belshaw’s post – maybe even partly because of his question, Is Twitter Bad for You? I’ve opened a twitter account. This marks an about-face for me, based on a previous declaration, and a comment I left on another of Doug Belshaw’s posts about the changing face of the edublogosphere a couple of days ago. First, I don’t think Twitter is bad for people. But it might be a major distraction for me – which has been my main point of reluctance.
The interesting thing, and the thing that moved me to set up the Twitter account, was that with the Diigo stampede, Graham Wegner’s post about edublogging and the bigger conversation, this post about filtering Twitter so that it works more like Del.icio.us, and Miguel’s expansive vision for using Diigo to build a multipurpose networking application, I began to give some more serious thought to what seems to be a changing blogscape.
A lot of people have written about this in the last several months. And I have nothing profoundly analytical to add, except to share this post from Bruce Sterling, Beyond Blogs: The Conversation Has Moved Into the Flow that I found today, in Del.icio.us, which finally tipped me off the fence I was riding with Twitter. Sterling was quoting Stowe Boyd:
Basically, conversation is moving from a very static and slow form of conversation — the comments thread on blog posts — to a more dynamic and fast form of conversation: into the flow in Twitter, Friendfeed, and others. I think this directionality may be like a law of the universe: conversation moves to where [it] is most social.
[....]
Twitter and other similar apps are based on the web of flow: information of interest comes to us, not the other way around. And it flows through people, through relationships: it’s not a bunch of clicks on URLs, scrolling, and so on. It’s a move away from hunting and gathering and into relationship agriculture: information grows in our flow applications instead of us spending time hunting it down.
[....]
The way I am getting tugged to blog posts is increasingly as a mention within a conversational bite in Twitter or Friendfeed. I then click out of the flow to see the larger post, and offer my view in the flow — not on the blog — and then I return to the flow, where I will be spending most of my time.
This makes sense: I want to talk about the blog post with the person who brought it to my attention, more so that with some group of strangers at the blog, or even the author, who I may not know at all.
I also don’t think we can expect the fragmentation of the social experience to slow down: it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
So I’ve jumped into the flow. Things change.
12 Comments
I don’t know whether to applaud or castigate you, Doug! The blog post you quote seems to laud the homogeneity of a particular conception of ‘flow’. I thought you and I tried to swim against the tide somewhat…
Well, yeah, but…
The conversation – at least, this conversation – is about stuff that happened six months ago. Your decision is not so much to go with the flow as to run with the herd. With all the attendant disadvantages that entails.
Whether we “run with the herd,” or “go with the flow,” seems a small difference to me. I can’t legitimately comment on something I don’t know anything about. It was a slow weekend, I guess, and I had some time to get myself in trouble.
Heh heh heh, good luck “following me” on Twitter Doug, after a whopping week, I dropped my account. I like conversations or full stories, not blips. Though a purpose of Twitter is to communicate publicly, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was eavesdropping while following others- and I don’t need or want to know every thought that my friends or colleagues are putting out there- I’d rather be baking cookies and listening to Leona Naess on the stereo, checking in on blogs when my toddler goes down for a nap. My own hang up.
Michaele, time for Twitter is almost zip for me, too. But I can quit any time. Really. I can. Really.
I’m never sure why people feel the need to categorize tools in such narrow and specific ways. Even blogs are multi-faceted in their use. So what?
My perception of twitter and how I use it is simply as a virtual staff room. A chance for people to relax a bit and be a bit less formal. D’arcy Norman describes it well on his response to Stephen’s post.
http://tinyurl.com/yw38e5
I’ve gone inward to learn more about people I already shared an interest with and gone outward to connect with people I didn’t know. I’ve increased my group/echo chamber and also adding folks I knew little about and share little in common.
You’d be one I’d be thrilled to know more of since I read your stuff and always enjoy it. I’d be happy to see you hang out it twitter a bit. Grab a coffee, sit down, listen and watch a bit, jump in anytime and leave anytime too. The door to the staffroom is always open.
Yes, avoid Twitter at all costs. Any tool that has been adopted by any group must be bad. Don’t be a part of the herd! You might want to avoid blogging, too. That’s been going on for YEARS! Oh, and wikis– don’t even get me started. Anything that has been going on for six whole months must be groupthink that no one in their right mind would want to be a part of!
Why non- and ex- Twitterers feel it necessary to call participating in conversation there being “part of the herd” when their own participation with people in their blogs, which are subject to many similar limitations and employ the same kind of directionality, isn’t exactly an iconoclastic act, and why others feel a need to characterize whatever the particular people they followed as necessarily representative of the whole (I’m sure people do talk about the most mundane parts of their lives in Twitter somewhere) in the same facile way that people refer to “blogs” as some kind of monolithic entity where all conversations are the same is beyond me.
I get people that don’t get or like Twitter. Some people have plenty of conversations on their own and don’t have time for it. Others enjoy participating in the short form conversations on Twitter and have found groups that reward their attention in various ways. Some people go to conferences and enjoy the group conversation with their peers at pubs and restaurants (which is exactly what Twitter is to me), others do not– or get enough of it when they do that in “real life.” It’s fine with me if people don’t want to be a part of Twitter. I’m not sure why it isn’t fine with those people that others *do*. Why the compulsion to belittle and characterize in the most narrow ways?
You’ll find me on twitter. But I know what I’m getting into. It can be distracting. And I often wonder, when do people actually “work” while twittering?
I worry about the immediate need twitter stimulates. While it may be an inward facing technology, I find myself wanting to know more outside the circles I seem to travel in. Maybe twitter is a TMI technology, as in Too Much Information. Do I really want to know what you had for breakfast? Yet if I find you interesting, I don’t care what you say… I’ll follow your postings and maybe comment once or twice.
I am going to start using twitter more to practice my creative writing skills. From now on I’ll only write in iambs! Or in couplets.
In this sense, I really find twitter wonderful.
Et tu?
Maybe I am just not serious enough about Twitter. I mean I am there and contribute but I just don’t give it much thought beyond sharing and receiving “just in time” information. I guess I never saw Twitter or any tool as anything significant beyond meeting a communication need.
However, I adore what you said about your tombstone. I am so going to make that suggestion to my children for mine.
Like anything we jump in and out as it suits.
The suns comes out so we decided to go the beach. The dogs fiesty so it’s time to go for a walk.
I’m suprised that those of us who have decided to broadcast our luminous answers to the worlds connectivity philosophicals via name-weeklies are the first to lynch the herd.
Imagine how great it will be when we havent got enough time to do anything and long comes a new tool called…..
Lets hope all we have to do is coin one word and thats it for the day.
Networked.
I like that term “relationship agriculture.” I guess you jumped back out of Twitter, Doug?
I find Twitter is like a huge river that empties into a very busy and rather chaotic ocean. Lots of good nuggets there and chances to interact, but also lots of waves.
That’s right, Wesley. I’m not there anymore. I was not good at it. Didn’t get it.
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