Friday, March 09, 2007

Too-Wit-Too-Woo To Whom?


In answer to my semi-rhetorical question in my last post (about the seemingly ever-diminishing quanta of web content over time) my attention has been drawn to Twitter.com. This website facilitates ‘real time blogging’ where you have a maximum of only 140 characters to describe whatever it is that you are doing precisely right now.
One of the live examples that happened to be on the home page when I went and looked in was “Folding laundry, eating breakfast, a little morning surfing.” Evidently not somewhere to go in search of profundity, so far.
I gather that the high-concept idea is to constantly inform your circle of friends about what you are doing, in the manner of a constantly updated voice-mail message. Seemingly this can become quite addictive, so I am not signing up just yet. Also, these services can devolve into echo chambers unless a lot of your friends use them.
Twitter.com is the new venture from Evan Williams, one of the original creators of Blogger, who subsequently set up the podcasting service Odeo. On the basis of his strong track record it is probably a phenomenon worth watching.

UPDATE One – 11 March
I have to append this link to a humorous visualisation of that blogging devolution meme.

UPDATE Two – 22 March
Having pushed through a particularly busy patch in work, I have now taken the plunge and set up my own Twitter account. The first think I learned was to turn of the SMS functionality after my mobile was quickly swamped with micro-posts.

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1 comment:

  1. r r atn spns such dat dis wot we r rducd 2?

    I always remember years (14?) ago seeing a note posted on a car in my companys car park (put there by an uber-busy dealer type) "pls dnt p ere" (or some such). This was pre-texting and I remeber being really taken by it.

    "Twitterpated" The state Bambi finds himself in in spring.

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