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Friday Philosophy – OK, so I am on Twitter Now November 18, 2011

Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Private Life, Twitter.
Tags: , ,
2 comments

Not a very exciting Friday Philosophy this week I’m afraid, just a self-publicising announcement that I am now on Twitter. I’ve put the wordpress widget on the blog for a while (days or weeks, I don’t know), my twitter name is MDWidlake. {I was a little surprised mwidlake had gone already but that says more about how rare I consider my surname to be than naivety, I hope}. It seems you can click on a part of the widget to follow me, which is a pretty safe thing to do as I am not very verbal as yet.

As I said, I’m not very active at the moment, I’m more following just a few friends and seeing what people use Twitter for. So far it mostly seems to be about:

  • Random stuff posted when bored
  • Complaining about work or, more specifically, tasks that are proving trickier than hoped
  • Drinking
  • Random stuff posted when bored
  • Articles that have caught someone’s eye
  • …or more often, about tweets about articles that have caught someone’s eye
  • Chatty stuff that only makes sense between social peers (and isn’t that one of the main points of something like Twitter?)
  • Random stuff posted when bored
  • Cuddly toys. I think that is a result of low sample size and that Doug Burns is away at a conference. I worry about his sanity sometimes.

Niall Litchfield, Neil Chandler and Doug Burns were right {thanks again for your advice, gents}, there is some nice stuff on there and I’ve already seen some articles and web pages I found interesting via it – but I have also failed to get on with proper work-like stuff I should have been doing as a result.

I also like the chatty extension to real social engagement that Twitter gives but I hold out on my final decision as to whether this makes up for the negative impact it seems to have on real, meeting-in-person socialising.

The interface to Twitter seems a bit, well, rubbish to me. I know, I’ve been on there for all of a week and I am probably missing the Bleedin’ Obvious  but it seems the stuff I see in Timeline, the default view, is just a subset of what people I follow say. I suspect that it’s got something to do with whether the person the tweet is replying to is on my follow list. To understand half the social stuff you have to go clicking around on people’s full tweet history and follow the thread back. Surely there is an easier way than this, maybe some connect-by tree-walk SQL could be invoked…

I’ve already dropped one person off my “following” list. I only followed one celebrity and I decided I could live without the random musings of Simon Pegg. I can imagine people get addicted to following several dozen b to z level celebs, maybe it’s like constantly living in some sort of poor quality reality tv show {Personally I tend to avoid all reality TV, I prefer reality. Except that I am forced to watch that dancing thing on BBC by my wife. And like most men who make that sort of defence, I can’t quite explain away why I still watch it if she is away…}.

So, don’t expect too much in the way of interesting, witty, insightful or even existing tweets from me as yet, but if you want to follow, heck you can always drop me like a sack of manure any time you like :-).

Friday Philosophy – Should I Be a Twit? October 21, 2011

Posted by mwidlake in Blogging, Friday Philosophy, Perceptions.
Tags: , , ,
3 comments

Something I have been pondering for a while now is should I join in with the “happening crowd” and sign up to Twitter? I know, I’m two or three years behind the times on this, but more and more people who I like have signed up – even Doug Burns now uses twitter and he used to be negative about it in the same way as I. I’ve asked a few of these friends what they think.

I’ve always resisted the whole micro-blogging world, probably due to the comments made by people about how much dross is tweeted and what a time sink it can be, something the people I asked all mentioned. And partly, being candid, because I know one of my faults is to shoot my mouth off before engaging my brain, especially if annoyed. If it takes 20 seconds to do a tweet, I shudder to think some of the things I might have put out there in the heat of the moment or when in the pub. Pub talk is fine, so long as it is kept in the pub. With a blog, it takes me so long to write them I tend to calm down before sending, if I am angry.

Also, tweets are not my style. I don’t know if you have noticed but I can be a little verbose {this means I spout several sentences where 5 words would do}. Can I be succinct enough to say anything anyone else would want to read?

That’s the writing of tweets, what about the following? I could just be a passive follower. But how many? This is part of the advice given to me by Neil Chandler and also Doug, to only follow a few people so that you do not just drown in an endless feed of stuff. I guess that anything good gets re-tweeted and so you see stuff not just by those you follow but the best bits of what they follow? Neil also suggested that part of what makes twitter work is joining in, don’t just be passive.

Something about Twitter that does bug me a lot, and this is just part of the whole texting/smartphone/constant communication thing of modern life, is when people you are spending social time with just sit staring at their bloody phone. I just find that really rude and I also think it’s a bit depressing when you see three or four people in the pub or restaurant, all staring at their smartphones and not communicating with each other. You might as well stay in bed. Alone. {Oh good grief what a terrible thought! Do couples who do social media now just sit in bed with their phones in front of them, ignoring their supposed love of their life?}

But of course there are advantages to Twitter. There is a lot of interesting stuff that goes on only in the twitter world and some of the tweets I have seen have been hilarious. It’s far more lightweight than blogging, something you can do in a quiet moment. Though Doug suggests this is why you get so much dross about travelling, people catch up on twitter when bored and also tweet then. Niall Litchfield made a very interesting point to me in that it allows you to keep up on a large range of topics and see new ideas and thoughts more. I like that. In fact, Niall sent me an excellent list of reasons for and against, which I’ll {almost} finish on.

From Niall:

*************

Reasons for :

– I get vicarious updates from a large number of sources on a large number of subjects. (Oracle,SQL,Science,Politics)
– It can suit my short and acerbic style from time to time.
– More people are doing it
– It indirectly promotes me (albeit with a somewhat misleading image)
– I find stuff I wouldn’t otherwise have found
– I have engaged with product managers I probably wouldn’t have done

Reasons not:
– time wasting
– addictive
– it promotes me in a misleading way
– it can annoy others

I like it because I’m an information junkie and like to keep abreast of stuff in several areas. It can be a colossal waste of time and irritate immensely.

*************

I think I might well give it a go and that leads to my last thought. If I am going to enter the world of twitter, I am going to have to get a new phone. My current one is so basic that it does little more than just make and receive calls. But a single charge lasts a week.