Twitter: 11 Pointless Personal Observations

1. Represents something important culturally - the asynchronousness, the lean feature-ness, the humanity of it actually, it's wonderful - we will look back at Twitter as the first whiff of an essence that sticks around for a long time
2. Most enjoyable online social network I have ever belonged to, no question
3. Most addictive web service I have ever used - I neeeeed it, not so much in terms of output, but input, to scrolly-scrolly and read the updates
4. 50% of my consumption reading-wise of Twitter is on my N95 using the m.twitter.com mobile site - lean, mean and good-to-go
5. I never used to care when it was down, I was really chilled out about it, now all of a sudden I find it as infuriating as others did way back when the bad juu juus started - it took time, but eventually I flipped too (but what is the justification? I pay nothing, I give nothing, yet I demand...)
6. When I read the Twitter tech/scaling updates I feel for those guys - it seems like they are in a world of pain, and it doesn't seem to end - I have a horrible feeling that there is a dark heart to Twitter's technology woes and that soon some very ruthless decisions will need to be made
7. How cool that Evan Williams started blogger and now twitter - that's going down in history type contributions as an entrepreneur, not bad going..!
8. I have truly formed and developed real relationships with lovely, interesting people I haven't yet or may never meet in the real world - in that respect it's much more like a forum than a Facebook
9. A-listers don't work for me in Twitter - too noisy, too newsy, too me-me-me - my favourite people in Twitter belong to Brighton or to the social media (inc. tech PR, enterprise software etc) melting pot, my real world communities
10. That said, I see nice decent people that I follow successfully engaging with A-listers internationally via Twitter - it has a unusually level feeling to it and a sense of accessibility and informality that is wonderful; if you want to make new and valuable contacts it's definitely there to be had
11. Originally my Twitter time destroyed my RSS consumption - that's bounced back now

Comments

[Chris Reed]

Twitter. A strange old world. News of your illness. And then news of your post... on twitter and via twitter.

You're right. It's addictive. It's here to stay. And even on a creaky old N73 it's a fine way to while away a few mintues.

Now, if only I could persuade a few more mates/colleagues to play with it and to get over that initial hurdle, to start to really enjoy it..

[Will McInnes]

Chris, I think the bit you say there is the key, the mates/colleagues bit - it really transformed for me in terms of fun and utility when people I already knew started getting into it.

[Alex Stacey]

If someone told me about their idea to start a website a few years ago and then went on to describe twitter, I would have thought it was a budget idea. I find the popularity of the service fascinating and it's certainly made me think about what it is that people like so much about it. Nice post. Food for thought. =]

[Will McInnes]

Totally agree Alex. Like so many online innovations, it would've sounded laughably simplistic and pointless. It's like SMS, which was famously included in the mobile standards as a kind of low priority afterthought and became the most profitable part of the mobile business - 10p for a tiny parcel of data transmitted across the network. And yet...