I wasn't as impressed with Twitter and Plurk as I have been with the other Web 2.0 tools so far. They seem a little redundant in their use. I like the RSS feeds to get my news/information in one location. It seems with the RSS you get the headline, a brief description of the story (basically a Tweet), but also get the whole article if you choose to read it. Also, as mentioned in my previous post about Facebook, I don't need to know what people are up to every second of the day and I am sure not going to be telling the world every time I have a cup of coffee or something trivial like that.
Of the two sites (Twitter and Plurk) I liked the interface of Plurk more. The timeline function is nice and I like that you can start communications with people and know who responded and when. However, I wonder if a site like Plurk can really take off once Twitter is so firmly established. Unless there is some functionality between the two sites where you can import/export contacts or friends/fans or whatever they are called, who would want to start over with a less well known micro blogging site?
When I first started messing around with Twitter I totally hated it for the same reasons you mentioned. I really don't need to know what people are doing all the time.
ReplyDeleteThat all kinda changed toward the end of last quarter, shortly after the Iranian elections. I was following some of the news stories and the coverage was pretty lame and redundant. A friend mentioned that the info coming over Twitter was far more interesting. The day I started following the "tweets" outta Tehran, the Iranian government banned foreign correspondents from sending out reports of what was happening. A media blackout. This is when things went batshit crazy on Twitter. People were "tweeting" from the streets of Tehran reporting on (literally) everything that was happening WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING. Everytime I'd refresh the Tweets anywhere from 300-1000 new posts were coming in. There was a lot of dubious info from some decidedly unreliable sources but other "twitterers" were verifing or calling out erronious info all the time. It was a pretty amazing couple days and it completely turned me around as to how powerful a tool like this could be when applied in this type of situation.
You should check it out during the next revolution.
That's a really great point - I can see how Twitter would be amazing during such a time. I never thought about that type of application because most of the demos and information on the web use very petty, unimportant examples pertaining to the daily life of users. I think Twitter and other such sites would do well to show other applications of their product - like the one you mentioned.
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