Twittering About
Yesterday Phillip Gomes told me all about the wonderous world of Twitter.
I now realize it wasn’t the first time I’d heard of it. I stumbled across twitter a couple of months ago, and all i could think of when I saw a bunch of people answering the question “what are you doing now” was “what a f-cking wank”.
But it’s not answering the question that matters. It’s what you can do with the platform. Twitter provides a dead easy way to send short messages to anyone who wants them via sms, IM, email or a twitter specific program.
Some US Presidential candidates are using it to great effect. Think about the potential of simple messages like “I’ll be at X bar in X city in two hours time, any supporters in the area feel free to stop by for a drink” or “I’m watching the news of X event on TV at the moment, why doesn’t the interviewer ask X pertinent question about X issue”.
Gomes tells me he is using Twitter to run a very effective live update service on the Tour de France, I can’t find it for the life of me, but to give you an idea as to what Twitter can be used for, here is someone else’s live update service.
Well I’ve determined to be a luddite no longer. I’m not sure what I’ll use it for yet, but you can find my Twitter account here or on my facebook profile. Maybe if I grow to like it, I’ll find a way to incorporate it into that super secret election campaign I’m involved in (but not speaking on behalf of).
Update: Gomes’ TwitTour can be viewed here.
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Posted: by Kieran July 22nd, 2007 under New Media, Personal.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Kieran
Time: July 25, 2007, 10:55 pm
I’ve been thinking about a couple of ways I could make half decent use of Twitter on this website.
Idea 1.
Put a twitter plugin in the sidebar, entitle it “interesting read” and add a tweet every time I stumble across something that might interest people at this blog.
Idea 2.
Use Alex King’s Twitter Tools, which can automatically create a daily post compiling a day’s messages to twitter, and then do the above.
Idea 3.
Create a weekly post with a live twitter box in it, let people go their if they want constant bloggy updates.
I’m hesitant to put something in the right sidebar, I like it having a lot of white space. Believe me, this site looks unreadably cluttered when their is plain text in both sidebars.
I’m hesitant to have a daily post of “interesting”, it could come to dominate the site, and does anyone actually want to browse what I thought was interesting reading yesterday?
And as for creating a dedicated page, anything more than a click away rarely gets seen.
But I am determined to try something… Twitter has the potential to make the place seem a bit more active, I’ve just gotta figure out how best to implement it. 
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