I was lucky enough to sit in on a blogging seminar this week given by the inestimable Jeff Javis, who’s got a million brilliant things to say about media, blogging and the Internet generally (though his Hillary flogging is getting a little tiresome). He’s quite high on Twitter, so I decided it was time to add this latest social networking, interconnectedness-of-everything service to my collection. Hmm, that sounds a little Borg-like. If you want to follow me or check in on my tweets, here’s my Twitter home page.
I can’t quite put my finger on precisely what I’m hoping to get out of Twitter, but it’s surely related to the theme of ambient intimacy that designer Leisa Reichelt first nailed on her blog back in March. Way, way back many centuries ago not long after the bible began, people lived in close physical proximity to their friends and relatives. Through a process of what I’d call social osmosis, they’d know what was up with everybody else even if they didn’t see or talk to everybody. You’d overhear something at the barbershop, in church, walking down the street. Now that we all live a million miles apart, that social glue has been lost. Seems like Facebook, Yelp, Twitter and other social networks are a techy form of social osmosis coming back.
Setting up Twitter was incredibly easy. I went to the site, picked out a user name and password and started updating. The service searched my Gmail address book looking for other Tweeters that I might want to follow. I also set up mobile updating using SMS in about 5 seconds. Then on Facebook, I installed the TwitterSync application which takes any Twitter update from my account and makes that my Facebook status. So now I can update my status from my mobile phone and have that message appear both in my Twitter feed and on my Facebook page. Cool. I also added the Mac dashboard widget Twidget to make updating from my Macbook Pro as easy as possible.
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