serious questions for LJ friends who use Twitter

[greenshadows]

Hi. I promise: I'm trying not to be hostile, I just have real questions about what this thing is and why I shouldn't see it as an affront to "normal" LJ posts

Comments

[herbmcsidhe]

I don't use Twitter, but a number of folk on my f'list do. I prefer the ones who use a cut tag for them, personally.

With many workplaces banning access to LJ and similar sites, I can see the appeal for a quick, short note, method of updating. TXT SPEEK is sadly almost required to post anything of length, which makes my eyes cross.

[greenshadows]

It seems useful for some people, and that's great. I just have a different view of LJ, one where interaction with my flist is easy and, while most posts aren't and shouldn't be full-length novels or even short stories, neither should they be a series of cryptic one-liners. As I've commented before, this is a new thing and a proper etiquette hasn't evolved yet. I believe it will.

[ravenlaughing]

I can use it quicker at work. There's a firefox extension where I can post to it from the URL bar. I can follow quick tweets there from my favorite celebrities and some fellow fanfic writers where I may not have time or interest to read an entire blog. Some people post immediate news there, like some protestors did while being arrested at republican conventions during the election. Some of my friends post from their cellphones when they're not near a computer and don't have a qwerty or iPhone.

It totally doesn't take the place of LJ posts for me at all. It's like... LJ is the diary and news page, and twitter is a post-it on the fridge. Does that make more sense?

I should add that I don't put my twitter posts on LJ because the few people I know both places, I've already read the twitter.

[greenshadows]

LJ is the diary and news page, and twitter is a post-it on the fridge. Does that make more sense?

Oh, very much! Which is why I guess I don't understand why people would blend them. They're for two different things.

[medianet]

I have not used Twitter myself. I looked Twitter up at Wikipedia since going to the Twitter site does not show much except for the green "Get Started-Join!" button. Wikipedia states: "Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length."

[greenshadows]

I don't even text on my phone, which is probably why I'm bewildered by this thing and don't think it's very interesting.

[ithilien]

My reason for using Twitter is that I generally tended to make fairly short LJ posts, which could easily be distilled down to the 140 character limit of tweets. Things like links to funny videos, news stories, pictures, blogs, fit easily into this setup, and really the things I do in my day-to-day life usually aren't interesting enough to warrant more than a sentence or two anyway. If something incredible happened that needed a whole paragraph, I might delve into an actual LJ post, but for the most part, my life and interests are pretty tweetable. And I wasn't using Lj much at all, so I figure that the tweets are better than nothing as far as I'm concerned, and if other people hate them for some reason, they can skip them as they don't take up much space. I also chose not to publish the "@" replies to my LJ, as they tend to be non-sequiturs to anyone not involved in the conversation they're part of.

[greenshadows]

thank you for omitting the "@" replies, at least - those are beyond annoying!

[instynct]

Twitter doesn't seem much different than group chat. When I was at IBM years ago we used group chat for team communication for web simulcast events, like the US Open. It was an efficient way for the team members at different sites to coordinate without resorting to cumbersome headsets

[greenshadows]

Some good points, B. - thank you! I mostly agree on the social stuff. Gotta say, however, that the primary age group I'm seeing it manifest with are in their 30s and 40s - it's not the 20-somethings so much. Then again, who's ON my flist for the most part?...so I've got no good data on that, really.

[instynct]

For 16 year olds that much peer connection to gossip and what people are thinking is like crack. Its actually changing the way the next generation interacts. The running joke of this new generation is that they wake up every morning and then call their friends to know how they should feel.

As for 30 somethings using it. All I can say is they must have a lot of free time at their jobs to screw off.

[geeklibrarian]

"As for 30 somethings using it. All I can say is they must have a lot of free time at their jobs to screw off."

I'm a 40-something, don't screw off at work and use twitter. It all depends on how you choose to use it. I interact daily with a very active open source software community and would miss it severely if it ever went away.