NickGeidner.com

Ok, I have now been twittering for about a month and a half and I think I am finally getting a hold of it. Let start with stats:

Following: 51
Followers: 51
Posts: 278

I am still not sure about it in general. I know a lot of people are using it and I know a lot of people swear by it, but I am not yet convinced. Here is what I am sure of:

• Twitter like most social media strengthens weak ties. For instance, I have noticed I talk a lot more to a number of people I would consider weak ties in my life. This is because I see them on my Twitter feed. Social media, unlike all previous media, allows us to see our whole social networks, so weak ties are less likely to become latent ties.
• I have found it easier to interact with new people on Twitter than on previous social media (e.g., Facebook), but this might be skewed. As I have said, a lot of people in my social network are not on Twitter. Since I still wanted to play with Twitter I actively sought out new people to talk to. But beyond this I also think the short 140 character message is a lot less threatening.

So anyway those are my two thoughts of the day. I also have had a number of people within my social network join Twitter over the last week or two, so this might affect my usage.

I have also been rethinking about a few concepts or theories and their relation to online communities. The first is synchronicity. Internet communications has variable levels of synchronicity. Chatroom and chat clients of nearly synchronous communication forms. E-mail or this blog represents more non-synchronous forms of communication. The level of synchronicity in a communication should moderate the relationship between the communication and a number of variables (Thanks, M. Beam). Also, I have been thinking about mass vs. interpersonal communication on the Internet and how that is a very gray area. Lastly, I have beenn thinking about the “broken window theory” as a way to explain the collapse of online communities.

Uncategorized Twitter

So I just wanted to throw down some more thoughts about my Twitter experiment again. As a reminder a few weeks ago, at the beginning of winter quarter, I decided to start Twittering. I just wanted to see what the fuss is about and I think I might do some research using Twitter, so I want to at least have tried it.

Let’s start with some stats:

People I am following: 43
People following me: 33
Times I have updated: 131

Yesterday was the first time I used Twitter during a breaking news situation (both the inaugural and then the breaking Kennedy news) and it was actually impressive. I was able to get a lot of information from a number of different sources. I was also able to directly communicate with a number of people very quickly. For example, most of my communication with Glenn, who was at the inauguration, was through Twitter. I also had no problems with overload or anything. I really expected Twitter to be slow and crashing from like 11:45 until a little after the speech.

The only problem I have been noticing is a problem I have mentioned before. There are a number of people that I talk to regularly who are not on Twitter. This includes: my friend Kevin, my brother, and pretty much everyone from school. Now that I am using Twitter there are times when I either (1) don’t tell these people something that I would have under normal circumstances, because I already mentioned it on Twitter and don’t care to discuss again or (2) feel a slight disconnect because they are missing the conversations on the Twitterverse. In short, there is an in-group and out-group being created around this new form of communication. I am, in my head, separating my network into at least two partitions (users and non-users). This goes along with my whole conception of perceived network connection.

So for the next few days I am going to try to keep track of everyone I talk to and how I talk to them (e.g. f2f, IM, Twitter, phone, e-mail). I just want to see how Twitter is changing my media usage.

Uncategorized Twitter

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.

Uncategorized Twitter

So day was my first full day of twittering and it seems to be going well. Here are some stats:

People I am following: 22
People following me: 10
My updates: 11

Anyway, so I am not completely feeling it yet. I think this is for two reasons.

1) I am not sure how mundane I should go. There seems to be a number of people who use twitter to announce everything. From “Going to go to the bathroom” to “Just sneezed getting kleenex.” But there is another group of people who only post occasionally. The bulk of there message seem to be general comments or critiques as opposed to messages saying what they are doing. Of course, most of the twitterverse falls somewhere in the middle. I guess I just need to decide what type of twitterer I want to be.

2) The majority of my primary social network is not on Twitter. Therefore, I gain less benefits from this communication technology (see Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations). Most of the people I am following are weak ties, such as a couple of people I went to grad school with at Ball State. Don’t get me wrong Twitter and most online social networks are good at strengthen weak ties, but I believe would feel a stronger tie to Twitter and gain alot more from Twitter if more of my strong ties were using the technology.

Uncategorized Twitter

So I have decided to involve myself in a little media immersion experiment. I am going to being twittering.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Twitter is a microblogging environment, which began about 2 years ago. It allows users to post short messages, up to 140 characters, which can be shared with friends, family, etc. Recently, it has gotten fairly popular in the popular culture. Both major presidential candidates used it, CNN, specifically CNN’s Rich Sanchez, has been using it extensively, and millions of people across the country have adopted this new technology.

So I have decided to test it out and see what the fuss is about. I am going to involve myself in the twitterverse regularly for the rest of this quarter (til mid-March) and then decide what I think about the whole concept of microblogging. I will admit I am going in with a bad attitude. Frankly, I think Twitter is a waste in nearly all circumstances. I can see how in some situations, like a Katrina-type disaster, this could be a useful communication tool, but overall I just don’t buy it.

Anyway, so that is what I am going to try. You can follow my twitters at http://www.twitter.com/ngeidner.

Uncategorized Twitter