Because more than a few thinkers I respect found time in their over booked schedules for Twitter, the 140 character rolling status updater of the digital life-stylish, I tried it out. I did find it useful as a way to follow the very, very latest (up to the second, literally) in areas that interest me such as personal technology, design, and related.
While updating my own "status" - which is effectively talking out loud in a public forum while knowing you will only be heard by those interested in what you have to say - may or may not be useful, advance my career(s), or increase my income, the aggregate effect is very interesting.
Using Twitter's search tool enables you to follow a "conversation" - a series of related status messages - on almost any topic in any language you desire. I used this yesterday to update the HD Interactive blog with a link to the current conversation of developers introduced to our newest project at the Adobe MAX 2008 Conference. Unlike the slow read and response system of blogs, Twitter enables immediate, constantly updated information to be exchanged behind like minded or similarly interested persons.
Having said all that, you can glean that I did find Twitter worth using, so follow me there.
But Twitter, in its absolute simplicity of a single entry field to answer "What are you doing?" is not perfect. With about 150 updates behind me and almost 40 "followers" receiving updates, I felt I should contribute my take on how the system can, and ultimately must, be improved before it becomes just a rolling screed without meaning or order. Purists will roll their eyes, but updates from 40 people are already far too much to keep up with, so I imagine when I have 400 or 1000 people in my friends/followed/persons-I'm-interested-in-reading list, Twitter will fail to be the email replacement some have already foreseen as its future.
Six Simple Ways to Make Twitter Better
- A Mute Button. Your TV has it. If anyone you follow gets on a roll and just will not stop updating - we won't mention any names - especially because they are giddy about a political election or want to mention every shiny object at a trade show, my Twitter page is effectively ruined for the day. I don't want have to follow and unfollow people, especially people that are otherwise top minds in my industry, but I want a button that mutes their updates until I decide to listen again.
- Hashtag Standards. Twitter uses the convention of using #topic as a crude way to tag a post as related to an event or certain topic. The problem I've already seen several times is that everyone creates different hashes for the same event. I noticed this during the recent Sarasota International Design Summit, as posts from attendees were marked with #sarasotadesign #sids2008 and others. This made it harder to find the online conversation around the conference and easy to miss updates. There needs to be a way to assign a hashtag, or at least a site to easily find their meaning.
- Link previews with JavaScript. Amazon already does this with their enhanced links for affiliates. You've seen this on Ask.com with the little binoculars icon. I'd like to know where I'm being sent before I click. This is 2008.
- Groups. I want to read updates from a selection of people focused on a certain area - social media, law, design, sports, humor, whatever - that I know they tend to focus on. I need to group these people by their topic.
- Tags. Same as groups, but some of us (myself included) aren't so easily fit into a box by industry. I'd like to tag posts as I write them so they can be filtered. If someone wants to know what projects we are doing in Flex or what the latest from my memeHive project is, they shouldn't have to follow me at the football game on Sunday.
- Quit Using TinyURL. Yes, it is slick that if I paste a link into a tweet (sorry, to those of you new to Twitter - I don't invent these bastardizations of English myself) it is automatically shortened to a tinyurl.com address. But why that service? Why not just link + number? Shouldn't I be able to just post with link:5658tm instead of http:///www.tinyurl.com/5658tm? Better still L:5658tm