Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Twitter Is Not Micro

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

Take the links away, and Twitter is not going to be fun no more, at least not for me. And I don't see what's micro about full blown webpages, news articles, blog posts, pictures, video clips. When I envision a tweet, I don't envision 140 stale characters. I envision a few words that point me to a weblink, more likely a tiny URL, that I might have the option to click on. That is not to say I don't enjoy tweets that are all words and no links. I do. But they are in the sea of links. That is why I enjoy them. It takes seconds to skim through an all words tweet, and usually another with a link is right below.

That is not to say I am a link clicking monster blindly clicking the links away. I pick and choose. But then that is why you carefully choose to follow people. Your library of Twitter contacts should be such that whenever you jump into your stream you find at least a few links to click on. I find that every single time. So when I go online, of all the places I could go to, Twitter ends up being the one with the greatest pull. You have to convince yourself it is not distraction, it is education.

Twitter is not micro. Twitter is smart. Can't do without Twitter in this day and age of information overload. Twitter allows for a smart consumption of information. You swim in the Twitter stream for half an hour, maybe 15 minutes, maybe 10, and you feel like you are in the loop, with the world. You know what's going on. You know all the right people. Heck, you follow them. They can't say no.

The tweet is the ultimate equalizer. Some of the fanciest names in tech put out tweets that are not that different from the kind of tweets I put out. I feel level with them much of the time.



After I have a new blog post, I tweet it, I don't submit it to Digg, or any of the similar services. I do use Delicious for bookmarking. But often time I just tweet an interesting link. I know I can track it with one Twitter search down the line. So I use Twitter also for personal bookmarking.

Twitter keeps my blog fresh. I guess there you could argue Twitter is indeed microblogging. But then, is it? My tweets tend to be link rich.




Demi Moore and I joined Twitter the same day. I have 230 followers, she has 520,738 followers. I am guessing she is better looking.

The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter





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