Twitter

andy

Anyone use it? I've signed up for it and I just don't get it. Does anyone understand it? I don't see how on earth it's supposed to be useful I'm going off facebook as well, whereas David - a former sceptic - is a fuly signed up member of facebook pirate battleships.

matt

It's the same thing as Facebook status updates. I could take it or leave it, but I'd definitely rather not know what somebody had for breakfast. Or how many times they've been the loo today. I've only watched somebody's twitter for "realtime" updates on the status of something I was waiting for the release of (a video game). I then got bored and went shopping and - of course - they released it whilst I was out.

Pete

The usefulness comes in it simplicity in mobile-micro-blogging.

The site (on a phone) is really useful to use, you can also send updates via text message, and get friends updates sent as text messages to you for nothing. It does personal (albeit, public ones) messages (online or sms) as well (using things like @andy and @pete at the beginning of a message)

There are also tons of somewhat interesting third-party add-ons

as for what its good for, i think i read it best as "international group text messaging without anything like the cost".

http://www.twitter.com/dazegoonboy

I think its best used for and by the bloggerati types like Cory Doctorow, who would have international friends and a web-presence to maintain

David

Facebook pirate battleships was only while Petra was at a particular job where the only thing the firewall would let through was Facebook. You want us to actually work during the day? pah. Please never let _bloggerati_ become a common word.

The ginger monkey

I'm a fan. It's addictive. And it's in your pocket. Better than fags.

andy

OK. I think the only way I'm going to 'get' twitter is by widening the circle of people who I link in to. "follow" me or whatever it is and I'll follow you. This is me: <http://twitter.com/firetail>; I'm giving it a week before I shut it down.

dominic

well you've been going longer than a week.

andy

True enough. But you have more interesting news.

Can we create an account for our youngest ever member?

dominic

she's only just learning to type, but yeah, i reckon.

Four Eyes

I remember this thread from 3 years ago

krappyrubsnif

Anyone want to give me a tutorial on how to get the best out of Twitter. I do use it but I'm still not getting it completely. (Confused old hack.)

Arkady

Andy, I didn't realise you were so rogueishly handsome. I'm jealous of your beard. I rarely tweet, but find that by following organisations and individuals that I’m interested in one queues up a list of amusing/curious links to explore when bored. Make sure you follow Simon Pegg.

rainbow_carnage

This is how I feel about Google+. When I joined two months ago, I had 25 G+ friends. As of today, I have 26. Of those, one posts incessantly. Two more post occasionally. The rest are silent, as am I. It's not exactly sociable. Three years from now, will I be amazed that back in 2011, I didn't really see the point of G+?

harpistic

@krappyrubsnif I love Twitter to bits, but it does depend on what you're using it for, or what you want to get out of it.

The main thing about Twitter is that it's primarily for engagement - for engaging with others, organisations - and for those who follow celebrities, to feel that you have a direct line to them. And of course the more followers you have, the more you'll get out of it (unless most of them are spambots) - lots of interesting discussions to be had! (but not with the spambots).

It's also a very good information source - breaking news, local news, and pretty much anything you're interested in. And there's always some meme or another floating around....

There's lots of guides on Google about how to use Twitter and how to get the most out of it, so those should give you some good pointers. And nothing's set in stone - if whoever you're following is boring you silly, unfollow them quickly! - you can always find far more important people.

Personal favourites are the comedy accounts - @betfairpoker, @themanwhofell (a SG local), @wstonesoxfordst, @tffail for transport woes, @its_death - it's worth joining Twitter just to follow them!

Arkady

@therealmrkhan is also comedy genius. And it wouldn’t be twitter without @johnprescott

Four Eyes

It's interesting that we're having this discussion on the day google+ opens to everyone. I joined back in June/July and after the initial hype I really don't see the point either. I've hardly ever posted on there but have acquired about 30 'friends'. 2 of them I know in real life, 2 I know from twitter and the other 26 I don't have the foggiest who they are. The rare times I log in it's like looking at a stranger's facebook by accident. I may have to eat my hat over this in years to come but I just don't feel there's the need for yet another social network when I already spend too much of my day looking at FB and Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, I'm a massive fan. I initially joined three years ago when Andy posted this and like most people abandoned it as I didn't really get the point. Having taken it back up a year ago it's become highly addictive. I find it a great place for keeping in touch with people I know, getting to know people who have similar interests, finding out about local news, sharing links/photos/music etc. I've also met up and become friends with people through Twitter after discovering we have friends and interests in common. I also discovered I was following/being followed by my next door neighbour for over a year without realising and it wasn't until he posted a picture of his house in the snow last Winter that I realised 'hang on that's my house too!'

harpistic

One thing Twitter's REALLY good for is real-time news, eg when something's just happened, like British Museum is evacuated, you can check tweets to find out what's actually going on. Or during the riots.

I agree about Google+ - there was a joke at the time it was launched that people were creating their accounts then simply following people they already follow through Twitter and Facebook. A few friends have been oversharing, so I've unfollowed them, and now it's deathly quiet on there. Apart from jokes about how quiet it is. And it kind of freaks me out having complete strangers following me on there. But it's early days... it's taken both Facebook and Twitter several years to become mainstream.

andy

For me, Twitter is useful for work, and I have a clear work=twitter friends=facebook divide in my head. It's good for keeping up with people you might otherwise drop out of touch with. Google+ is rubbish. In my stream most of the content is being added by people I know who work at Google. @arkady - i genuinely don't know what to say.

Four Eyes

It doesn't freak me out when people I don't know follow me on G+, in the same way that it doesn't when someone I don't know in real life follows me on Twitter. I think part of the problem is that people haven't really established G+ etiquette yet?...people seem to be using it like Facebook but it appears a bit stalkerish because you rarely friend someone on FB that you haven't met in real life, do you?

By launching as invitation only there have been comments that google have created a 'geek island'. Maybe it will become mainstream, who knows? I've never been a fan of FB and use it reluctantly because all my friends do. Social networks only seem to have a limited lifespan on the interweb (e.g. friendsreunited, myspace etc) and I feel that FB is coming to the end of it's lifespan. But hey I might be wrong...

harpistic

I think Google+ had a really good concept with the launch, that as access was by invite only, it meant that it would grow via people's social circles, rather than opening it up to everyone from the start, and ending up with haphazard membership - after all, its main failing is that people are happy enough with Facebook / Twitter and either don't have the time or use for another platform.

Sort of as Andy said, I've got separate FB & Twitter accounts for work / personal, and it's kind of disconcerting having both merged on Google+ - I LIKE keeping work and personal separate!

On Twitter, it's usually obvious why certain people follow you (unless they're social media gurus and/or spammers), but I have no idea who these people are on Google+.... In theory, though, it'd be good to allow certain people to follow you without having their stuff in your newsfeeds....

Not a fan of FB either - I see it as a necessary evil, and it's irritating the way it's so insecure about its brand identity, it has to keep imitating Twitter and now Google+. And my love of Twitter is largely derived from it being not-Facebook :)

emine

My work is obsessed with Twitter, so I reluctantly (and rarely) use it but it infuriates me. Most people I follow seem to use it entirely for showing off or profile-raising (I should probably just unfollow them). But even keeping up with the interesting people takes a huge amount of time - I can waste hours looking back through someone's feed and while the stuff they direct me to is usually pretty interesting, I rarely remember it for long and I just can't see how all this information - delivered in ill-thought-out snippets - is improving my life. I have already noticed that I find it harder to read a book these days. Not good. And it is very unreliable - during the riots it was full of misinformation and scaremongering. Most of the people I really rate and respect aren't on Twitter, which tells me a lot. But I will persist I suppose - can I add a plea for tips too? Like, is there a way to keep following someone who annoys you (but you don't want to offend by unfollowing), but not have their tweets appear?

Four Eyes

@andy.. just noticed you've unfollowed me on twitter! I won't take it personally, I had noticed your twitter = strictly professional. Mine = strictly unprofessional. I understand why people wouldn't want their timelines clogged up with me prattling on to friends all day...

harpistic

@emine - which app do you use? Quite a few of them have filtering enabled, so that you can filter out people, hashtags (all those bl**dy memes), chats, keywords etc. I use DestroyTwitter, but it's got a DM problem. I couldn't cope with Twitter if I couldn't filter out a whole lot of people and junk.... ;)

Re riots - I agree, towards the end, pretty much every part of London was under threat, but it was useful to find out what was happening or happened in specific areas. And it's fun to look at nearby tweets....

Arkady

I primarily use Facebook for events and sharing ‘friend’ photos. I use photobucket for my development-geek photos. I’ve only been using twitter for a month or two, and it’s slowly taken over the ‘wall’ function from Facebook for me. It would have completely taken it over, but only a fraction of my friends are on Twitter. I tried and failed to integrate my twitter posts and Facebook feed – if anyone can tell me how to make that work I’d be grateful. @andy – I understand. I’ve had you described to me by a handful of people who have met you in the flesh, and for some reason I was left with a very different mental picture. I had in mind… sportswear. @FourEyes – you have a stray apostrophe there that you might want to tackle before tosscat sees it.

miss annie

Google+ seems utterly pointless. I love twitter. I have a personal account and I am also the tweetvoice of the twitter account for my workplace. It's unbelievably useful for work. Most people follow back when you follow them as a well known company so you get to talk directly to people who you might otherwise have had to try to contact through agents/publicists etc. It's great for letting the public and customers know what's going on and what's new and each site has it's own voice, so the company is not seen as a faceless behemoth. I really enjoy it. My personal twitter is fabulous both for keeping in touch with pals and mostly for networking for freelance and craft stuff. I mainly follow people who do a similar kind of thing so they follow back and I get to hear about all kinds of opportunities that I might miss. I like @Reginald_Jeeves. @KRS the best thing to do is start by following people you know, people in a similar field and people that you are genuinely interested in. @harpistic I know @wstoneoxfordst, and they are, like most booksellers, aspiring authors and post their tweets here <http://storify.com/wstonesoxfordst/waterstonescom>; in the hope of being discovered.

Four Eyes

@emine Making list on Twitter is very useful. You can bundle together people you know in real life/people who interest you and then you can view your list/timeline with only the tweets from these people, leaving out all the other fodder that doesn't interest you.

Also third party apps like Echofon which I use on my mobile allow you to 'mute' somebody without unfollowing them.

I also use hashtag muting apps like mute.ly to filter out things that clog up my timeline (#xfactor on Saturday nights for example)...

andy

@emine - lists. I keep three private lists with about 20-odd people on each: ('friends', 'people i know' and 'work') i mainly look at those lists and then dip in and out of the main stream. four eyes - please don't take it personally! I am slightly overwhelmed by the signal:noise ratio of all this social media.

andy

ah, what four eyes said.

emine

@harpistic - thanks, your post sounds really useful but I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about - I am so behind! I don't use an app, I just the web. This is wrong, yes? I tried Tweetdeck once but couldn't work it out. I will investigate Destroy Twitter.

Four Eyes

@Arkady I use Tweetdeck on my desktop and phone. You can add multiple twitter and facebook accounts and view all in one place. You can also decide whether to post to FB/Twitter or both.

I'm going to shut up now cos I'm sounding like a right geek.

harpistic

@miss annie That's interesting to hear about @wstonesoxfordst, I'd been suspecting that it and @betfairpoker are written by the same person, as they're so similar in style! I'm shocked at how few followers @wstonesoxfordst has, as their tweets are so hilarious - particularly yesterday's comment about Google+!

Also, it is SO appreciated when company accounts actually take the time to interact with their followers, and it really makes them stand out - I've seen so many criticisms of theatres which either don't reply to tweets, only RT other tweets about themselves (though a few are starting to adopt Storify, thank god) or cross-post from Facebook.

@Four Eyes - Echofon now does muting? Cool, am switching back to them straight away, then! :)