When it comes to Twitter, there are perhaps two or three different categories that people fall into. The first category consists of tech-savvy 25-and-older types, and most of these jumped on Twitter immediately, finding it a lot more interesting than other social media like Facebook. The second category might be people like myself, who have used Facebook and MySpace for the past four or five years, but have been slow to find a definite purpose behind Twitter. The third category thinks Twitter is stupid, confusing, and/or evil. This blog post is for groups two and three.
But to whichever group you belong, you may have noticed the Twitter widget situated in the right sidebar of this blog. It essentially lists all recent posts for the Supraterranean Twitter account, where I post the headlines from and links to all content from each monthly issue on the site, Supraterranean.com. It’s kind of a bare-bones approach to Twitter, but remember, I’m from category two, and I’m still finding new ways to use the site.
Those of you in category three might now be asking yourself, “What’s the point? It’s boring and useless. People just post what they’re doing at various times throughout the day. That’s not interesting. And I don’t want to share that kind of personal information on the web for everyone and their grandma to see.” Well stated, category three.
However, there’s more to it than that. I recently started working as web manager at an NPR affiliate station, and we’re finding that Twitter is extremely useful. In fact, in my four weeks on the job, I’ve almost become convinced that Twitter is drastically more useful for a media organization than for any individual. We can distribute headlines for all our news with a convenient link back to our website. Anyone following us will see these links, and they can easily keep up with the news.
They can respond to us with an @reply (now simply called a “mention”). For example, let’s say someone likes a post I put on the Supraterranean Twitter account. If they want to reply, they might post the following: “@supraterranean That was a great poem by Joe Shmoe. Thanks for being super duper.” This will show up in my reply box, but it’s a public message that remains on their page. Another cool development is called hashtags, essentially keywords denoted by a pound sign (“#”). You may have noticed that I started adding keywords to the Supraterranean posts. A poem gets keywords like #poetry and #writing. As of now, the best way to search Twitter is at Twitter Search, which will eventually be integrated into the site itself. Go there and type in the keywords I just mentioned. I bet you’ll find some content from Supraterranean.
None of this impresses you? You remain skeptical? Or, like Jack Lessenberry, the senior political analyst at Michigan Radio, you think that social media are “the real al-Qaeda plot to destroy western civilization.” But wait! There’s more! Twitter isn’t just a destination; it’s also it’s own middle man. The third-party applications and services being built around Twitter are often more interesting than the site itself. Programs like Twhirl and TweetDeck allow you to keep track of posts, replies, direct messages and more, right from your desktop. Sites like Tweetburner and Tiny.cc allow you to shorten links so that you can fit more text into Twitter’s 140-character limit. TwitPic makes it easy to share photos in Twitter. FriendFeed can aggregate all your activity on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and pretty much every other social site.
Are you still bored? Or more to the point, are you still confused? If there’s one thing I want to convince you of in this post, it’s that Twitter is a positive presence on the web. That’s because, no matter what actually happens on Twitter, it is constantly evolving based on how people use it. Hashtags evolved because people started putting the pound sign (“#”) in front of keywords, not because some company made people do it. More importantly, it’s all about sharing! It’s the single greatest method for share links that has emerged on the web so far. Yeah, Facebook has updates (and they might have even done that first), but by being tied to the rest of Facebook, those updates will never be as capable of flexing and maneuvering as Twitter updates are.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Twitter seems simple, but that’s just because we’re still thinking of more interesting ways to use it. I just heard about a small publisher in New York called Muumuu House, edited by writer/blogger Tao Lin, that purports to publish Twitter posts. I’m not joking at all. Follow this link and you’ll find “Selections From Chris Killen’s Twitter Account” (edited by Tao Lin). What’s there? One example: “2:22 AM Mar 16th my penis feels like a CD i never listen to anymore.”
My favorite use of Twitter so far is by anti-pop star Lily Allen (Twitter @lilyroseallen). She’s currently on tour in the U.S., and she’s been holding Twitter scavenger hunts for concert tickets. She arrives in a new city, posts a riddle on her Twitter account with a hint as to the ticket location, and then updates when the tickets have been discovered. I think that’s a freaking cool idea.
Even just posting on your own page and not paying attention to other people, you could come up with creative ways to use Twitter. Take still shots from your favorite movies, post them using TwitPic, but include a quote from that scene and challenge people to guess the film before clicking the image link. Track every instance of the most random keyword combinations you can think of: #seaweed #wax; #carrot #car; #dog #cake; and then Re-Tweet those posts on your own account (FYI, “RT” on Twitter means, re-tweet — essentially repeating or forwarding what someone else has already posted). Write impromptu haikus and click update.
If this blog post fails to inform or inspire, hopefully it’s because — as I already pointed out — the system is still developing. I’m convinced that it will get more and more interesting, so I’m content to take it for what it is right now. What seems like anarchy today will feel like a regular old institution a year from now, so be patient and maybe you’ll enjoy yourself.
p.s. – Feel free to follow me @ndmeador
UPDATE 4/21/09: This weekend I found someone doing something new and interesting with Twitter. They’re called “Retweet Bots.” Essentially whenever someone types a certain phrase on a Twitter update, and that certain phrase has a bot set up, the update is picked up and the author receives an automatic reply. For example, if you include the expression “Oh snap!” in your update, a retweet bot by @natefanaro will catch it and reply to you.
But that’s not the coolest part. What’s more exciting is his website, where the bots display in real time all the Twitter updates they’ve collected. You can even follow those bot accounts and see all the funny messages that come up! So it may not have any practical use (not yet anyways), but it’s still fun and creative.
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