Think before you Tweet...

A little while ago I did a few blog entries about Twitter, a micro-blogging/personal broadcast tool.

While I found it entertaining, I realized that my "Tweets" would be broadcast into the ether. I wasn't sure that everybody needed to know everything I was doing or doing.

Well, apparently some people just don't learn that water is wet until they jump right in.

Here's an interesting article on the deliterous effects of Tweeting before Thinking:
Twitter gets you fired in 140 characters or less - Technotica- msnbc.com

To Twitter or not to Twitter...

I actually finished my Twitter experiment about 3 weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to write about it until now. I bet you've all been on pins and needles.

Here's the poop:

Pros:
If you want to really get to know someone and how they really spend their time, this is definitely a good way to do it. If they're faithful to the motto "tweet everything", then you'll be able to enjoy the ins and outs of their lives.

You also have the ability to get the stream of consciousness of large segments of people. Be they friends or your target market. I liken this to the band with a loyal following of fans who might want to see an impromptu performance be it a local club or online web cast.

Cons:
If you don't have a piece of technology that you keep with you all the time, you won't really get the full effect. I found that the mobile interface was great with my smart phone. But my wife pointed out that if you weren't tethered by something that had ready access, you weren't apt to go out of your way to tweet about the minutia.

It's also quite hard to decide whether to tweet before you go do something or after. Is it important to get the play by play or the synopsis of the thing you just did?

There's also the concern about privacy. You have to be careful who's following your tweets. For example you want to tweet that you're going out for the night. If you've left enough info about yourself lying around you may have a complete stranger decide to steal your stuff, because he knows you're gone. (I know a paranoid viewpoint, but stranger things have happened.)

Also, the Twitter web site/backbone seems to get "stuck" sometimes. It seems to get bogged down and unresponsive during peak usage. Only I'm not sure when that is, because it happened sporadically.

In total:
I stopped using Twitter after the experiment, because I ran out of stuff to tweet about. Nobody really wanted to know when I went to the bathroom. However, the things I learned about the people I was following was pretty neat. It was eye opening to see the rhythm of their lives.

I would also like to give special thanks to Brookie & Janae. They were kind enough to test it out with me, and it made it a much more worthwhile experience.

Facebook follies...

In my experimentation with Twitter I've created a Facebook account (gave into peer pressure). It's actually be a pretty good experience. I've found a lot of family/friends with relatively little detective work involved. It's like you're supposed to find people on Facebook or something.

It's also worthy to note that you can use Twitter on the Facebook page to update your whereabouts. I'll post something more in depth on both Twitter & Facebook in a short bit. I just want to make sure I give both sites/services a proper run through.

Hello All,

I've come across this service called Twitter. It's kind of like a way to mini-blog your life.

The idea is that you send 140 character (maximum) updates on your whereabouts, activities, and day dreams. People can "follow" you and you can "follow" others. And hopefully along the way people get to know you better by what you decide are important activities to twitter (not sure that should be a verb) about. Then you get to know what affects people in a daily unobtrusive way.

I'm trying to decide if it's technology that makes life better or noisier. I'm going to experiment with when and how to twitter and whether or not it's only useful for someone in high school.

In attempt to be fair about it, I'm going to try using it for 2 weeks and report back on the experiment.

Here's where I need your help. I would like to follow and be followed. It would be nice to have other experimenters try it out. And since following myself would be weird, I was hoping a few of you would like to see if it's worth the trouble to catalog your lives.

Below is a video that describes Twitter. At the very least it's a well produced and interesting video.

If you like it go to twitter and sign up. My twitter page is: http://twitter.com/hpractv

Afterwards I'll report the pros, the cons, and any meaningful observations. It's either a 2 week test run of an interesting idea or a cool way to get a play-by-play of people's lives that you care about, but don't get to hang out with all the time.