Twittered out

December 8, 2008

I’m starting to realize that I’m just “twittered out.”  Recent events seem to have proven this to me.  Looking back at the twitter conversation that started off all of these posts, it just seems like the conversation was akin to us all walking into a room and just talking at each other, not even pausing for each other to respond.  It seems like none of us, including myself, were really listening to each other.  I would say this only strengthens my point that Twitter should not be used for conversations.  Using it for purely IM purposes (such as “@mwalters want to hang out tonight?”) is just downright silly in my opinion.   However, I don’t really have the energy to back my point up any further then I have in the past.

Because of this, if you’d like to engage me in conversation, I give you these options:

  • Call me
  • eMail me
  • Send me a letter via USPS – promise I’ll respond in kind
  • Send me a txt
  • Send me an IM
  • Write a blog post and send me a link to it (using one of the above methods)

However, please do not:

  • Send me a tweet
  • Send me a brightkite tweet
  • Send me a plurk tweet
  • Send me some other micro-blogging service tweet

If you do, I’m no longer going to respond in any fashion.  And if I’m currently following you and you do it too much with others, I’m probably going to unfollow you.  Sorry, but it really annoys me.  Twitter already has a signal vs noise issue without being used as an IM service for me.  It’s time for me to “put my money where my mouth is.”

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Twitter as a Conversation Platform (Continued)

December 8, 2008

Jeremy has responded to my post regarding the use of Twitter for Conversations.  It seems I need to clarify things a bit further, so let’s get down to business.

Jeremy seems to go off on what I’d call a tangent (although apparently he deems as merely layers in the conversation) with his post.

my concern is that (1) he misunderstands my original point, and (2) he underplays the significance of what’s going on.

Later on, he states what I figure is the best summary of his point:

Twitter is opening our eyes to a new need people have. It’s one thing to say they are using a bad tool to meet the need; it’s another thing entirely to say that people somehow shouldn’t have this need, or that they should meet the need via available tools when they’re clearly not using them.

I have not, on any medium, ever argued that there is a need going unfulfilled by the proper tool, nor have I ever argued that people should not have this need.  That’s just insane, and border-line insulting of my intelligence.  Jeremy and I somewhat straightened this out over IM.  His primary concern seemed to be that I never explicitly articulated this point, therefore I was missing it in his opinion.  As I brought to his attention, there are many things that I have never stated, however it does not make them untrue.

Don’t worry folks, I hereby proclaim that gravity exists.  You can all rest easy now.

As well, to clear the water on some other points:

Twitter for short conversations / floating quick ideas doesn’t really bother me, so long as they’re moved off to another medium once it becomes obvious that there’s too much to be said on Twitter.  As an example:

Bubba: Anyone heard of a bug with IE6 doubling margins?

Gump: @Bubba Yeah, it’s a known bug, you can get around it by putting display: inline on the element

Then if Bubba needs to know more, hit Gump up over IM/Email.

What does bother me is, given no previous conversation, “@soandso What would you like for dinner?”

This is when IM, eMail, SMS would be better used, and where the ego-inflation really comes in.  I’m sorry, I don’t care who you are, this is too much.

As Jeremy admitted, he knew he’d provoke a response out of me, and that’s all well and good.  We’re friends, so we do that to each other.  Obviously he’s free to use the service how he sees fit, and if I don’t agree with it, I can always unfollow him as I’ve done with other individuals.

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Twitter as a Conversation Platform

December 8, 2008

So earlier today I allowed myself to be pulled into a debate over Twitter.  Generally speaking, I am not a fan of using Twitter as a conversation tool.  I decided (as indicated in my comment on twitter) that the conversation would be better held in blog post format.  A couple of ground rules for this post:

  1. Pretty much everything here is subjective.  I don’t really intend to sway anyone’s opinion.  If I do sway it, then it’s just by chance.
  2. What I do plan to do is better articulate my points since in a blog post I have the space to do that.  Being limited to 140 characters makes this difficult.

Here is the conversation that was had from beginning to end:

jeremy6d: People who knock conversations on twitter forget that there’s not a good alternative for public micro-conversations. What say you, @mwalters

mwalters: @jeremy6d Twitter is not the place for this conversation. :P

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d You could always have have the conversation in the comment section of a blog post

jeremy6d: @jasonkenney that requires the centralization of the conversation; we need a neutral, more spontaneous conversational space

jeremy6d: The post/comment model is too brittle. It reflects the way CERTAIN conversations start. Twitter is clueing us into another mode.

egoodnoe: @jeremy6d I agree but Twitter suffers from lack of threading

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d If you can get this to work (I’m having trouble) it could do it – http://tinyurl.com/5d7rjy

mwalters: @jeremy6d I’d still argue blog posts and use of trackback if a conversation needs to be public

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d Another way is interconnected posts on multiple blogs. Spread the conversation!

mwalters: @jeremy6d I’d also argue that not just many, but most of these conversations don’t need to be public other then for the authors ego

bigfleet: @mwalters So in your world, if you don’t understand or can’t trackback, you are a non-person?

mwalters: @bigfleet I don’t mean this as offensive as it sounds, but that’s a pretty absurd argument. Perhaps write a blog post to better explain?

bigfleet: @mwalters You posited that a trackback is a sufficient mechanism to expand the audience of a blog post. Those unable to do so are neutered.

mwalters: @bigfleet Easy to get a blog these days, and popular ones support trackback automatically. Plus you’re not limited 140 characters

jeremy6d: @egoodnoe that’s my point; we need a tool that captures the spontaneity without the poster/commenter duality.

mwalters: @jeremy6d @bigfleet @jasonkenney I’m out at this point … seriously, write a blog post or something, this is obviously too big for twitter

jeremy6d: @mwalters so why aren’t people following your simple plan? Answer: you’re glossing over an authentic need.

jeremy6d: @mwalters it’s not obvious at ALL that this is too big for twitter. But ball’s in your court on how you drive this conversation.

jeremy6d: @mwalters it IS easy to get a blog these days. But the power of twitter is that there’s no artificial distinction btw a post and a comment.

jeremy6d: I’ll say one thing in favor of @mwalters ’s argument: if you need to post three tweets to get your point across, just blog it. -1 for me.

The points I would like to address are:

“People who knock conversations on twitter forget that there’s not a good alternative for public micro-conversations. What say you, @mwalters”

As I said in tweets, I believe that blogging is an acceptable platform for having public conversations (micro or not).  There is nothing that says a blog post needs to be multiple pages.  It can be, “I’m bored” or something more in depth.  Admittedly, the former is a bit absurd to make into a blog post, but I’d argue that it would be equally absurd on Twitter.  I have yet to see a reasonable argument as to why blogging doesn’t work for micro-blogging/conversations.

“jeremy6d: @jasonkenney that requires the centralization of the conversation; we need a neutral, more spontaneous conversational space”

Twitter is NOT centralizing it?  Especially when compared to having it via blog posts w/ trackback?  I’d say it’s not only centralizing it, but is doing so poorly.

“@mwalters You posited that a trackback is a sufficient mechanism to expand the audience of a blog post. Those unable to do so are neutered.”

Blogging is very easy to get into these days, and most popular blogging platforms do trackback without the author even having to think about it.  As long as they link to the post which they are replying to, the blogging platform will automatically send a trackback.  For instance, WordPress has this functionality and is easily viewed as one of the most popular blogging platforms that currently exists.

For a little further clarification, I’d say that because of this, arguing trackback as some sort of entrance barrier just doesn’t float for me.

As well, I was specifically singling out trackbacks because I know that Jeremy has concern over owning his content, comments/posts/etc.  Trackback is an existing tool that fully allows this.

“@egoodnoe that’s my point; we need a tool that captures the spontaneity without the poster/commenter duality.”

It doesn’t need to be poster/commenter.  Once you use a trackback to reply to someones post, you have essentially removed the “commenter” connotations, while still allowing someone that is trying to follow the thread to do so.

“@mwalters it’s not obvious at ALL that this is too big for twitter. But ball’s in your court on how you drive this conversation.”

Of course it was.  You basically admit to this later, so I’ll just let this one sit unless you’d like to bring it back up.

“@mwalters it IS easy to get a blog these days. But the power of twitter is that there’s no artificial distinction btw a post and a comment.”

There’s no artificial distinction between a post and a comment with trackbacks either, and trackback makes following a thread FAR easier then the @ reply system in place on twitter.  It’s virtually impossible to follow a conversation thread on twitter unless you’re extremely bored and feel like extensively using search.twitter.com or you happen to find the tale end of the conversation, allowing you to follow the thread backwards via “in reply to” links.  This doesn’t even begin to touch on how horrible that is (trying to follow a conversation in reverse, c’mon).

Anyhow, that is why it is my opinion that Twitter is not a good tool for carrying on a conversation, especially when compared to blog posts.  Although remember that you are not limited to blog posts.  We are oozing methods of communication these days: eMail, IM, SMS, just to name a few.  Perhaps I’m a Twitter “purist”, but I really look at Twitter as more of a beacon system.  It asks the question, “What are you doing?” and I feel that is best used when answering that question.

Posted in Technology | Comments (10)

The Interview (Part 1) … continued

August 30, 2008

One thing I forgot to mention in Part 1 of The Interview was that the question doesn’t need to be reserved for technical oriented interviews.  Playing with the wording a little bit, allows the question to be suited to just about any type of position.  I used this same question technique when I was asked to cross-interview designers for instance.  I could see it easily being applied to project managers and many other job types.

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The Interview (Part 1)

August 29, 2008

So for those that don’t *really* know me, I tend to be a bit of an introvert (ok, ok, for those that *really* know me, a lot of an introvert), and can have some pretty geeky tendencies at times.  But I think the subject matter of this post could be useful to both introverts and extroverts, geeks and non-geeks.  I plan to break this entry up into two posts:

  1. The Professional Interview
  2. The Social Interview

Now, for the geeks amongst you, drop the “Web 2.0″ definitions of “Social.”  That’s not what this is about.  This is more of an experiment in sociology then anything else.  Anyhow, let’s go ahead and get into the meat of what I’m writing about.

It all centers around this basic question: Read More »

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