News and thoughts from the people at EllisLab.

> There has to be more here then meets the eye. 
> Is there?  Maybe I’m hopelessly out of it…

I don’t think so, pal, on both scores.  The population that can afford to watch high-noise, low-signal channels will stay small.

It’s not like SMS.  Some folks see no use for texting, but once they have some peeps who use and monitor it—and a need arises—they’ll come around, at least a little.

It’s not like IRC, which can be tedious for casual users but vital for an invested community.

Twitter?  Sometimes a circle-jerk is just a circle-jerk.

LQ

Posted by Lou Quillio from Troy, NY USA on  Monday, March 24, 2008

I use twitter a lot, for a couple reasons…

My sister lives in England and just had a baby, so hearing the overseas news in real time makes me feel closer to her. It’s quicker and easier than writing an email; both of us have found that by the time you sit down to write a long letter, there’s too much to recount and it’s exhausting trying to cram it all in, so it remains undone. But little snippets from each other’s daily lives are delightful and keep us in touch.

I also have a core group of friends that are pretty witty and make amusing cracks all day long, which keeps life on a positive keel.

And I pull the rss feed and archive it so I can go back occasionally to review things I’ve done in the past when I need to refresh my memory.

My friend Andy only “tweets” when he’s taking a trip, including the latitude and longitude of where he is, which he then pulls into a google map, so he can see a dated, annotated map of his travels around the world, which is pretty cool.

I don’t accept “tweets” all day long, though - I don’t get them via sms, just through Twitterific, which I turn off when I’m working so I’m not distracted.

And there are some friends I would never follow on twitter, and I do an awful lot of blocking of people I don’t know who try to “follow” me. I’m not particularly interested in having an audience of people I don’t really know.

Twitter’s just another tool in the communication arsenal, and probably doesn’t suit everyone. I don’t think I use it at all in the way that Scoble does, and it’s probably different for everyone. If it’s not useful for you, that’s cool.

Posted by Steph Mineart from Indianapolis, IN on  Monday, March 24, 2008

The other thing I might point out is the importance of context - what may seem like silly minutiae if you’re randomly looking at someone’s public timeline might mean more to the specific group of people following a person, and even when people leave their timeline “public” security by obscurity suggests that the only people really following are people who actually want to know something. I’d close my timeline to the public except that it shuts off the rss feed, which I use.

For example, I got a mean-spirited email from someone asking “why he should care that I’m weeding flowerbeds in the corner of my yard?!” He probably shouldn’t care, but the three neighbors following me now know they don’t have to take care of that community project, because I already did.

You might not care what I have for lunch, but my girlfriend will care if I ate the last swiss cheese and she needs to shop before dinner.

Posted by Steph Mineart from Indianapolis, IN on  Monday, March 24, 2008

But Steph, it seems like the benefits you ascribe to Twitter don’t *depend* on Twitter, rather that you choose it.  “Ate the cheese” is a text message.  We could say that a Twitter stream lets your girlfriend know things you might not think to tell, but that’s a high-overhead approach and should be discounted by “You knew I was at home and would have lunch, so there’s a good chance cheese was eaten,” eh?  Normal life—made more expensive by the effort to broadcast a whole life stream for no sure value?

Likewise your sister’s and globe-trotting friend’s feeds (or your aggregating them) don’t depend on Twitter.

Is there a convenience benefit, perhaps re mobile input?  Do you gravitate toward Twitter for some things because certain feeds of interest originate that way?  Do you publish via Twitter for the same reason:  to be on the same vector as some of your peeps?  In your view, how much is fashion, how much is functionality, and how much is popular ease?

What’s the Twitter nugget, if there is one?

LQ

Posted by Lou Quillio from Troy, NY USA on  Monday, March 24, 2008

No, I’d say most of this communication *is* dependent on twitter. 90% of it is functionality, 10% of it is ease of use, 0% is fashion. The cross platform mobile/desktop aspect of is a strong feature, as well as ease of use for the non-technical, and the fact that it’s a group chat. There are other comm tools, but none that have all those same features in combination, other than tools that came after twitter.

As my sister said in her reply to my tweet about this message “Thats crazy! How else can i know what my family members are doing thousands of miles away?” Not only is my sister telling me that the baby sat up for the first time, she’s telling my mother and four brothers at the same time - that would be six different text messages, or one email she’d never get around to writing in between burping the baby.

“Ate the cheese” could be a text message, (to take your low road and address the joke example I used about hidden context) except that we don’t use texting on our phones since it costs 10 cents a message. Twitter is free via safari on the iPhone, for us at least.

My lower-tech friends and family would never bother with trying to figure out IRC, but twitter is easy to sign up for and easy to use. This is true for my sister, who isn’t tech savvy and also wouldn’t bother making her own blog to talk about the baby sitting up for the first time. And a blog would be asynchronous; twitter exchanges are synchronous and real time, so if you have real time questions, you get real time answers.

Another use case where only twitter would work quickly & efficiently - my girlfriend and I went on a cross country road trip last year. We twittered what sights we visited, and we also twittered when we got safely to the next hotel in the evening. So at the end of the day 20 people knew we were safe and not in a ditch somewhere in Arizona. Sure that could have been done individually, or via a group email that some wouldn’t check right away, but why bother with that when twitter is right there?

You’ve mentioned signal to noise ration a couple of times - but my point about context is that what to you might be noise is signal to me, at least from my family and friends.

Honestly - how much of what you say to people around you in an average day is a gleaming pearl of profundity? Unless you can say every single word that drops from your lips is such a pearl, then it’s a bit of a crank to chide others having semi-private conversations that you eavesdrop on for being “juvenile.”

Posted by Steph Mineart from Indianapolis, In on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Steph,

Okay, so you’re saying that the advantages to you (in no order) are:

* Cost (free on data networks)
* Cross-platform (consume and create)
* Ease-of-use for noobs
* Cuts through email fatigue

... and what seems to me the big one:

* Good-enough ACLs

The last seems most significant to me because while other forms of micro-blogging could address the cheese, niece, and travelogue, there’s no easy way to do them on a semi-private, multi-user channel.  (http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=78)

Clearly, the low signal-to-noise problem doesn’t pertain for tight affinity groups, or they wouldn’t be groups.  I’m directing the narcissism knock at general Twittering with public updates.

Thanks.  I understand Twitter a little better.

LQ

Posted by Lou Quillio from Troy, NY USA on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I didn’t get Twitter at first and I’m not sure I do know after using it for awhile. However, what keeps me using it is that unlike email or IM, twitter conversations rarely have an agenda or a task related to them, which is refreshing. Every email I get is someone telling me to do something, every IM is the same, so are most phone calls.

Twitter, on the other hand, is usually someone just saying hello, community venting, or sharing something low-key, which is a nice break from the usual communication and a fun, low-effort way to get to know people a little better.

Posted by Leslie Camacho from Lincoln, NE on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I think that Twitter is another tool that minimizes human interaction in the guise of increasing it.  If tools like Twitter let you know what happened at your wife’s job, or when your friend went and bought groceries, what are you going to talk to them about?  Tools like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc. shine a light on the intricate and even mundane details of our lives, and among many groups of people have all but decimated real human communication.  Ironic since their entire purpose is to help you communicate with others.

But they convey only information, and cannot compare at all to speech, in fact making them unsocial networks.  I do not think that I am far off track suggesting that the upcoming generation are going to have underdeveloped speech centers of their brains, because technology continues to give them ways to communicate information faster and more conveniently than speech, so why bother?

Posted by Derek Jones from Metropolis, IL on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Twitter?

What is that?

That what my question when somebody asked me for my twitter at SXSW. I have been working with New Media and Web Design since College back in 1994. I could tell you all the trends, but obviously I have been, either, working too much to look at all trends, or just not interacting with the internet as much as I thought I was.

Facebook has a tweet like tool, right? So why is twitter so talked about?

As I see it, in the late 90’s there was the internet with big stories and postings, then in the early 2000’s there was blogging, smaller pieces of information about somebody’s thoughts. Now.... Twitter? even smaller pieces of information about… I do not know about what anymore.

I recall, back in 1997, my wife and I bought our first mobile phones, they were NOKIA, and they had text messaging. We used text messaging all the time back then, people were not used to it, at least in the U.S., so the service was free, that’s why we would be texting back and forth through out the whole day. But our texts were complete sentences, not what it is now, where words are formed without the use of vowels, for the mst prt.... oops, getting in the mod.

I agree with Derek Jones, it seems like people are going to have underdeveloped communication in their brains.

As a last anecdote, I recall that the sensationalist media through out all networks (Today Show, GMA, etc) did some investigation on what would happened if people didn’t have their laptops, watched TV, used their phones, and could not access their blackberries. The families they did their research, looked stressed out. Every year, I go back to Mexico, a country where almost every person has a mobile phone, yet, when we are there, we leave our computers, cell phones and do not watch TV or movies for almost three weeks, not only a week, and you know what, I would like to do that more often.

As this is my last line, should I tweet on my twitter account the following line: Ranting about how Twitter is of no use.

Then again, I think that would be an irony or hipocrisy, or better yet, a hipocrite irony.

Posted by Ludvik Herrera from Fargo, ND on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I was kinda with Rick on this one.  I’ve never understood the value, or use of many of the “community” apps that have come about in recent years. Ironically enough, as a developer I create virtual communities all the time, but things like Facebook, Myspace (yuck) and Twitter were lost on me.  And as convenient as IM’s can be, I also find them to be a time suck and rarely use it unless I have to.

I have to admit though, the previous posts have opened my eyes a bit as to how Twitter can be useful.  So you can teach an old dog new tricks

Posted by Tony from Scottsdale, AZ on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Ludvik,

I’m always careful to separate the tool from the people and how they use it, which I think is what’s really happening in some of your examples.

“If tools like Twitter let you know what happened at your wife’s job, or when your friend went and bought groceries, what are you going to talk to them about?”

The same thing - twitter is just a way to continue the conversation whether we’re physically present or not. I haven’t stopped talking to my friends and family; we still see each other a couple times a week and go to dinner, hang out. It’s just that conversation doesn’t stop when we head home.

I’m blessed with friends who are particularly good conversationalists and who have wide-ranging interests and active, inquisitive minds.

And I write as much as I ever have, “blog” as much as I ever have. I think my blogging is more focused on longer, more introspective things because I’m not also trying to share daily concerns anymore.

I have a friend Dan that I’ve known since 1987, and although we had a long shared history, what I’ve learned about him through twitter gives me a deeper perspective on who he is - the goofy, handsome college student I’ve always known and partied with is enhanced by the on task, impressively effective corporate manager at work and the somewhat stressed insomniac who spends wakeful nights examining mortality and “place in world.” Those are some powerful things I would not have known about my very dear friend without twitter.

Posted by Steph Mineart from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I now live on the other side of the continent. It is a great tool for feeling like you are part of a community on a human level (the small things).

It also sparks debate and can be used for shouts for help or support.

I do turn it off at times as it can get distracting.

Rick, I would be careful calling it childish or immature when some of your own staff use it to communicate.

Posted by Steven Hambleton from Cairns, QLD on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

@steven - lol, no worries. We’re all pretty different at EllisLab and get along just fine.

Posted by Leslie Camacho from Lincoln, NE on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

@Leslie - I know. Perhaps Rick can use it to hear micro comments on EE’s usability, especially useful for version 2 coming up?

Just an idea and yeah I know you guys are pretty tight there.

Posted by Steven Hambleton from Cairns, QLD on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

It’s been interesting reading the comments, and has helped me gain a little perspective.  I can see how it can be useful and add value in some circumstances.

I guess, for me, I just don’t feel all that compelled by it.  Maybe it’s because none of my offline friends and relationships are part of that world.  No one that I know apart from the web uses Twitter.

Or maybe it’s just a temperament thing.  I don’t IM much either.  That might surprise people, but I find that it busts my groove.  I tend to focus on one thing at a time.  I’m a serial processor more then a multi-threaded one.  So it feels like an interruption to get IM’d.

As far as my juvenile comment.  I think I’m probably reading the wrong tweets (or whatever you call Twitter threads).  The threads of high-profile online personalities that have tons of followers feel to me like a social gathering for the cool kids.  I don’t mean that disparagingly.  It’s just that there’s a bit of a cult of personality thing going on, where the thread become a place to be seen.

Posted by Rick Ellis from Bend, Oregon on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

@Rick - I see where you’re coming from in terms of the social ‘herding’ around the web celebs.

But then sometimes we feel that we want to know the people a bit better and sometimes Twitter can do that as it’s less planned and premeditated than a blog or email.

Then again, you could be thoroughly disagreeable to me and I would still buy your software so perhaps you shouldn’t be on Twitter at all… lol!

As for the serial processor, that is just the term I am looking for when describing my work methodology during the day. It probably explains why I haven’t achieved much while responding to these comments…

Ok back to work then!

Posted by Steven Hambleton from Cairns, QLD on  Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Twitter is just a way of letting a large group of people know about something in your life, in real time without the restrictions of actually talking to people. For example in college I would use Twitter (via Twitterific) during lectures to let my friends know what I was reading on my computer. The latest story that I read on Digg or a part that I was bidding on for my car. The great thing about that was that I could update people with something when I thought of it, but unlike calling someone or texting them I didn’t have to distract them from what they were doing unless they wanted to be distracted. They got the update when they opened twitter with out me having to interrupt them, something that I enjoy when I am working. When I want to take a break I can open up Twitterific see if anything is new that I really car about then get on with my life. Twitter is also great for letting people learn about sites that you find interesting, I actually came to this blog because a friend posted that they read it. Sure I could write about it in my blog or use something like StumbleUpon but that requires people to go there and search oppose to it being on their desktop or phone and it requires me to take extra steps… even though EE platform is really easy to add to it is extra steps that I proably wouldn’t do for a few words

Posted by Justin Long from Troy, OH on  Friday, April 04, 2008

For me twitter helps bring a sense of community to my day - important when I’m sitting alone in the basement most of the time.. I think some relationships are developing via twitter that might lead to different business opportunities.

However I was just thinking the other day about EllisLab and Twitter.  One challenge for me—as a result of the virtual nature of EllisLab and me being both new to the company and a part timer - is just figuring out what it is that everyone does.

It occurred to me that it’d be nice if everyone twittered - even just once a day - what they were working on that day.  Then I could get a feel for what day to day tasks people were doing, and it’d be less obtrusive than having to ask via email etc - I hate to bug people whom I perceive to be busy doing important stuff...

Of course such a use would raise a number of questions over just how open to be with that info, but it was just a quick idea.

Posted by Boyink from Holland, MI on  Friday, April 04, 2008

Hey Rick and all others above. Here’s my €0.02.

I use Twitter and find it pretty useful. I get ‘tweets’ from friends and family SMS’ed to my cellphone so I can keep up with them most of the day, or if, like now and a lot of the time, I’m sitting at a computer I disable the SMS’s and Twitteriffic takes over.

Twitter is not as distracting as you might imagine once it becomes a background process for your brain. It’s a bit like email in that respect - remember when we all first started using it we all checked our email clients 100 times a minute, waiting for it to show ‘you’ve got mail!’ - but now we all just check it once-in-a-while as a kinda background thing.

Twitter is much the same after the very-mild-novelty of it wears down and it becomes just another useful tool.

My family, friends and colleagues are spread out over just about all the continents, most of them now use Twitter, mostly via the m.twitter.com page accessed from their cellphones, and it’s kinda cool always kind of, hmm, going through life with them, no matter where we are at the time. I feel more connected with my own personal social circle 24hrs a day, which when you live far from ‘home’ (as I do - I’m a Brit from London living in Portugal) is a good feeling.

So, I’m all for Twitter now I have figured out how to seamlessly integrate it into my life. After all, if you’re not in the mood to keep up with the general goings-on of your friends and family, you can always switch it off (whereas in contrast email is impossible to ignore for long, and by nature far more intrusive time-wise, as it carries all kinds of content, some of it very important - invoices, security warnings, servers down, work-related things, etc. etc. With Twitter I figure if something really important happens people will just phone me).

So, yes, Twitter is cool by me (once you get the hang of it and find out how it can be useful to you in your particular circumstances).

As an aside; have to say that the expression “I find that it busts my groove’ sounds like something straight out of Easy Rider to me, a Brit. Mind if I adopt it for my own use?

Posted by Rob from Portugal on  Monday, April 07, 2008