Twitter Update
I have been Twittering for a few days now and I am starting to have some informed opinions about this communication system. First, some stats:
People I am following: 38
People following me: 21
Times I have updated: 40 (about 10/day)
One major problem I have noticed is Twitter seems to be down a lot. I have gotten one of their cutesy error screens at least 10 or 12 times in the last couple days. This is annoying. I have also had a lot of problems with Twitterific, my iPhone Twitter client. At first, I thought that it was a problem with the app, but the more I think about it the more I think it is probably having issues on the Twitter side of the connection. Regardless, I understand that over the last six months they have been experiencing amazing growth, but if they are having this many problems now I wonder what would happen if a national emergency (e.g. 9/11) happened. We might get a little test of this at about noon on the twentieth. My guess: they will crash, because of millions of simultaneous “Yes, we did” tweets.
Again my goal of this project is to understand the benefits and weaknesses of this communication system and to understand why and how people use it. So one of the things I have done over the last couple days has been to search out people to follow. I also talked to my friend Glenn, who is an avid Twitterer, about his Twitter experience.
First, who have I started following. When I started looking I wanted to find two types of people. These are people geographically near me and people who are idealistically close to me. I looked for people geographically close to me, because I thought they more give me good information about the community around me. I had some luck. I found Chris Bradley the weatherman from 10-TV in Columbus. He posts weather updates about 4 or 5 times a day. Very convenient. I also found that the Dispatch has a Twitter account, but all they do is send out links to all their main stories. Not very convenient. Unfortunately, I had problems finding regular people from Columbus to follow, but I don’t blame Twitter that much for this. Don’t get me wrong, I think they could make it easier to find people geographically close to you, but I would also have more people if more of my local social network was on Twitter. So half my fault, half Twitter’s.
As for people idealistically close to me, I had more luck. First, I looked for some widely known tech people that I respect and most of them were on Twitter. These included: Danah Boyd, a researcher for Microsoft, Prof. Lawrance Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, and Steve Safran, VP at Audience Research and Development. Then I just started searching and had some good luck. I searched for “communication research” and found a few university-based comm groups that had Twitter accounts. So now I have all these people and I am hoping that through them I can find other new and interesting links.
I also talked to a friend of mine, Glenn Luther, online and mobile media producer for MHz Networks, about his Twittering experience. Basically trying to find out why he does it. First, he has two accounts, which is interesting. Each represents a unique identity. One is his work account, which has fairly serious posts. Most posts in this account link to some kind of tech or journalism related outside story. Then he also has his personal account, which usually has light, funny posts. These clearly represent two distinct personalities, which correspondent to the different identities he uses through out the day. In a follow-up discussion it would be interesting to find out if while at work he goes to and post on his personal account as a type of temporary escapism.
Beyond this, his overall use of the technology seems to be much less as a two-way communication system and much more a way to broadcast his thoughts. As he said about his personal account, “Some people do stand-up as a hobby, I twitter.” He uses his work profile to push out his thoughts about technology, journalism and media and he uses his personal profile to basically say funny things. In talking to him, I felt he used the people he followed more as an entertainment than informational source.
His use of Twitter is opposite of me. I want two-way communication and information. He seems to use Twitter for one-way communication and entertainment. It would be interesting to do some in-depth interviews or a larger survey to try to understand how others use Twitter. I am sure some kind of topology could be derived.
Well I just realized I have droned on for much too long.
Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, will be coming back to Columbus this Sunday. It is down on capital square. Doors at 11:00. Program at 1:00.