Twittering and Reading Update

David Armano and I are engaged in an exchange program: He's reading the novel The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason about Burma in the 1880s and I'm Twittering.

I'm in Day #5 and these are my observations about my experience with the Twitter phenomenon. (As a gesture of solidarity for David, I've been re-reading the Piano Tuner. Shown are some of my photos from my trip to Burma last year.)

Getting registered at Twitter is fairly simple. It's always good mental stimulation having to figure this stuff out. The Twitter interface seems fairly straight-forward.

My initial circle of "friends" consists of marketing people I've met blogging: Drew, Gavin, Ann Michael, Paul, David. Through Twitter, I also finally got to meet Mike Sansone. I'd seen his blog, but never commented. So we exchanged greetings.

I began to learn the ins and outs of "adding friends." I started receiving invitations from people all over: a veteran blogger in Austin, a teenager in Ann Arbor, a liquor store owner in Oklahoma, a designer in Munich, a lady (CleverClogs) in the Netherlands. I said "yes" to all of them. Why not?

I think that Twitter is having some major infrastructure issues. Response time during the day (I'm in California) was slow. I guess many people are responding to the Twitter buzz and wanting to try it out for themselves.

I found the most rewarding time (for me) to Twitter was 4-5 PM Pacific Time. Response time was good, and there were also a number of "friends" on at the same time. So, the experience felt a little like shooting the bull with about 10 other people. Some things were funny. Some were interesting. Some were inane.

This felt intimate — just a circle of "friends" tossing stuff out. But here's a big caution: you can go to someone's blog site that has "Twitteriffic" installed, and you can see that the whole conversation is being broadcast to the world. So, I learned it's important to watch what you say.

A lot of this experience made me feel like a teenager. I remember six or seven years ago when my then-in-high-school-son would spend a lot of time doing AOL IM with his friends. This is what he must have felt like.

Over the weekend, I tried to give people a sense of what I was doing: "Watching the Buckeyes put it to Memphis." "Took Corgis up to the hills to run around." "Planted De Arbol Chile Peppers." "Got up at 5AM  for Sunday morning swim practice." "Wondering how fast Michael Phelps will go this week." Etc. And I got pretty much the same from the "friends." "What's your favorite movie?" "What kind of bike is that?" "What do you think of Todd's Marketing list?" "Now that my wife is out of town, what should I do for fun?" "I've never been robbed in my liquor store, but the previous owner was." "I'm talking gratitude with my daughter."

At one point, I had the idea of using Twitter as an oracle. My question was: "What should I do next?" and the answer will be whatever the next entry in my Twitter box says. I tried this several times, but when the answers were "Drinking shots of tequilla, yum" and "Smoking a big cigar" I figured that the Twitter oracle was taking a break.

At this point, Twitter is still amusing. But I can see how it can suck a lot of time out of one's day. Also, as I mentioned, the Twitter folks have some serious infrastructure issues on their hands. Sudden popularity can be a real problem. Stay tuned!

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

I agree with the feeling of group intimacy that Twitter facilitates -- but as you say, it is important to remember that it is being narrowcast. BUT ... that is also part of the fun -- you get snippets of other conversations -- and sometimes this means getting GREAT insight or a viewpoint that you had not considered.

Is this eavesdropping? Or conversation once removed? Hmmm ... interesting.

[Paul McEnany]

I couldn't agree more about the infrastructure problems. Seems as though the platform is simple enough (and no pictures or video) so it shouldn't take them too long to iron that stuff out.

Hopefully, anyway. Otherwise, they might have just blown a huge opportunity.

[Drew McLellan]

Roger,

I agree with you completely -- Twitter is intimate. It's sharing a moment in time with friends. But...we have to remember, we're sharing that moment while having coffee and talking in a public place.

The walls have ears!

On the listening end...that's what I find fascinating about Twitter. Twittervision literally is like peeking into people's hearts and minds. It's really captivating.

Drew

[Roger von Oech]

Gavin, Paul, Drew: Well, it's three of my "Twitter-friends" shifting gears to comment in the blog format. I agree with you about the prosaic intimacy. I still remember some of the things each of you said this past weekend. None was profound, but that's what made it interesting.

About the infrastructure problems: I think Twitter's problem is that it runs in an opposite fashion from the Internet. The Internet is decentralized; a breakdown here will not prevent your message from getting through over there. In Twitter, on the other hand, it seems that everything is going through "Twitter-Central." And for a lot of the day, "Twitter-Central" is a bottleneck.

Thanks for your comments.

[Austin Kronig]

Thanks for being open-minded enough to add a self-described 17 year old entrepreneur from Ann Arbor to your Twitter list of friends! I've really enjoyed reading your updates.

Despite its mishaps, Twitter has really allowed me to join/cultivate a new community of inspiring people. So, from a business networking perspective, Twitter has been tremendous.

Yet for a lot of people my own age, they haven't quite adopted this trend. Many don't feel the need because they are already seamlessly "connected" via Facebook and other online communities. Also, Twitter seems to be too broadly based and doesn't really add much value to their current conversations. So, their really isn't a niche for people to dig into.

*Not that I'm a spokesperson for my own generation*

[Stephen Denny]

Who says the oracle was taking a break? "Think like a child," Roger! Nothing wrong with tequila and cigars, after all...