Shelley makes the assertion that we are never going to bother with our Twitter past. When I read that, I initially agreed with her: Twitter is a fast-moving medium for short messages whose value fade as time marches on. So in general I won't need to go back and retrieve them. Then today happened and I realized that it's not because we won't want to - it's because it's going to become impossible.
I'm a big fan of Alexis' When-Can-I-Use site. I liked it so much that I asked him to let me link directly to when a specific feature will be usable. He obliged. Here is an example of when SVG will be usable.
I then started using that enough that I became mildly annoyed that the options take up so much space that people wouldn't understand that I was linking to without scrolling the web page. So I asked Alexis to provide a setting in the URL to hide all those options. He humored me again and implemented my suggestion. He even provided an example link. The problem was that this part of the conversation happened on Twitter.
Anyway, I used this feature a couple times and it worked great. Now it's months later: I have forgotten the option and failed to write it down or bookmark it or ... That was clearly my fault. The fact that Alexis didn't make that option discoverable on his site is another problem (but it is his prerogative).
Snap forward to today and I read Mark's latest excuse to drop a few F-bombs. I wanted to provide him with that option in the URL so people could get his point (that @font-face is almost ready to be widely used on the web).
I toyed with the idea of just sending Alexis an email to send me the details of that option, but that's just too slow these days - plus the information is out there! 🙂
I ended up seeking Alexis' Twitter profile, then going back in time (several pages, I might add). Because it was a tiny URL I almost missed it. Thankfully some surrounding tweets gave me a clue of the context. Here is his tweet.
I'm still convinced that talking at 140 characters a time is just the wrong way to communicate. Throw in the fact that I don't really own that data (it's in someone else's database). Throw in the fact that Twitter is notoriously unreliable. Throw in short URL services. Throw in the fact that threaded conversations are only sometimes navigatable and in only one direction. Throw in the fact that you can't even tell what message Fyrd is replying to because he used Netvibes. Throw in the fact that the conversation is not searchable like it would be using email, IRC logs, or blog conversation. Why are we doing this again? We are doing it because everyone is doing it too and we don't want to miss out.
But we are not thinking about the longer term usefulness of that communication. Twitter is a very short-sighted way for us to be communicating in the 21st century. And these problems go FAR beyond the Short URL one. Yet because that's where the information is flowing, that's where people are going.
Anyway, I'll take this as a lesson learned: If I find something important on Twitter, make sure I write it down somewhere else.
You make very valid points that I’ve heard elsewhere as well. That’s why it always astonishes me that people who follow hundreds and have hundreds of followers actually use Twitter to communicate at all. I see twitter more of a “singularity” where you just send things out and don’t care where they go. If you put more value into it, that’s unfortunate.
Further to the point of being able to retrieve things, even with the best of search technology, I have difficulties finding things I saved in delicious, starred in reader/gmail, forums or even things I’ve written myself. I setup a really simple wiki (nothing complex, Wikka does great) where I use it as a private “pastebin” of sorts when I want to quickly record anything. Best decision ever.
Yep, I’ve had the wiki idea before. I just don’t think it’s scalable over long periods of time and over a broad spectrum of knowledge. Furthermore, searching in a wiki kind of sucks (I use mediawiki internally, perhaps there are better options). I’m finding that if I’m smart about my searches, I can generally find stuff using Google for the web, GMail or my feeds.
As for your other point about putting too much value in Twitter: Unfortunately it does have just enough good qualities that people use it – and that will inevitably result in some form of conversation.
The problem with IRC is that not enough people use it and it requires people to actually be present to be effective. The problem with email is that it’s not instantaneous enough (and you have to contend with spam). Twitter is really a creepy in-breeding between instant messaging and email that gained a critical mass of users. Now it doesn’t matter how crappy their implementation is, it’s the people using it that are driving the value (positive feedback).
Twitter’s the kind of service that was bound to happen though. The fact that it’s tied to SMS limits causes a bunch of trouble but there are a lot of other parts missing that just seem to stem from being designed poorly. The thing is, it was bound to be designed poorly because the only people that would attempt to build such a service must be naïve about scaling.
I use twitter a lot because that’s where people are. It bothers me that I don’t get better access to my data or the conversations I’ve had but I can’t let that keep me from participating.
Wow, I think that’s the most my name has ever been mentioned in a blog post. 🙂
What if there was a way we could host our own messages, as well as ones directed at us? Could just be copies of the ones hosted on twitter. Far from an ideal solution, but it would solve the basic problem you had. Wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already created a method of doing that.
As for adding that option-hiding option, I think I meant to do that but didn’t get around to it. May just make it the default. Thanks for the reminder!
@Alexis: Actually I do that very thing at my microblog. I use ping.fm to send my tweets to Twitter, Facebook, identi.ca and my own custom PHP. The problem with this is I don’t get the ‘connecting’ threads of conversation, it’s only me talking into a vacuum.
Excellent points.
I’ve actually thought about deleting my old “tweets”, primarily to demonstrate the ephemeral nature of Twitter…Well, when Twitter itself isn’t losing my old tweets.
If one sees Twitter as a harmless way to pass some time, perhaps share something new, I think it’s OK. But the biggest danger I see with it is that it can suck up time, and leave nothing to show for it. And it can fragment information, like shards of the glass one dropped and can’t see on the kitchen floor.
> The problem with email is that it’s not instantaneous enough
I don’t really understand this.
In the “good old days”, people were using protocols and standards. Now I see an explosion of proprietary services usage. Unique and closed services that are not interoperable. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the whole bunch of others social networks.
This is scary.
And the first to connect to these are non geeks. Because they don’t understand the real difference between communicating with boring open e-mail and fun closed facebook.
We missed the IM opportunity with MSN years ago. And XMPP couldn’t overtake it.
Tell me Jeff, why on earth do you use Twitter if you could just do the same with a self hosted atom/rss ?
>> The problem with email is that it’s not instantaneous enough
> I don’t really understand this.
I guess probably because you don’t use Twitter. I have my browser open more often than I check my email. Also, due to its brevity, Twitter communications feel more like a quick conversation than email whose length is at the author’s whim.
> In the “good old days”, people were using protocols and standards. Now I see an explosion of proprietary services usage. Unique and closed services that are not interoperable. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the whole bunch of others social networks.
> This is scary.
I guess I’m not as scared as you. There is movement towards an Open Social pardigm. And it will happen eventually. Walled gardens don’t really last (AOL).
> We missed the IM opportunity with MSN years ago. And XMPP couldn’t overtake it.
Beg to differ there. IRC came first and that’s still going strong in the geek community and it’s an open RFC. I use Jabber every day at work. I guess it all depends on what you mean by ‘overtake’. There will always be proprietary experiments and platforms.
> Tell me Jeff, why on earth do you use Twitter if you could just do the same with a self hosted atom/rss ?
As I’ve tried to indicate in this post and my comment, the value in Twitter is the other people that are using it. A self-hosted solution would not work on its own because that would be only one-way communication.
I’m also aware of (and on) identi.ca, which uses an open source version of twitter (laconica) that you can self-host (though I do not). I’m just not clear on whether you can decentralize it and get the same experience as Twitter yet.
It’s pretty much a given that we’ll see border-radius support in IE9. I don’t think a 100% grade on the CSS3 selectors test is out of the question however IE9 will likely (and needs to) focus on a massive overhaul of the JScript engine and add at least *some* critical SVG support. This is based on comments I’ve read by Chris Wilson and other IE team members, usually on archived versions of the monthly chat. This is a good page for Opera to show how IE lags behind other browsers in standards support for their case in Europe.
> IRC came first and that’s still going strong in the geek community
Precisely. I don’t think IRC is mainstream. I see more geeks reluctantly signing up on facebook (is that what you call a proprietary “experiment” ?) by their mum’s pressure than mothers convinced to use IRC. I don’t think the global movement is towards openness. But I hope I’m wrong.
I’m not saying twitter is bad. It would be great if it was more interoperable with other microblogs.
Is it just me or people tend to use more brand names instead of common names : ipod to say mp3 player, iphone when they mean smartphone, twitter instead of microblogging, …
What’s the brand name for monoculture again ? I’ll check in a wiktionary…
I might as well say it here first: in Version 2.9 of my website people will get more font choices since I’m very interested in CSS3. How I’ll implement it remains to be seen though you know, I like the idea of choice! 😉