Twitter and Microblogging
Here’s sometime a little hard to imagine. Pretend that every half hour, you have to enter a little something about yourself and post it publicly on the Internet. What you’re eating at that moment, what project you’re working on, and so on. Sound crazy? Well thousands of Canadians are doing it, and it’s all because of a new phenomenon known as “micro-blogging.” The CBC’s technology columnist Tod Maffin sheds some little light on this peculiar behaviour.
Any thoughts on this draft script for Thursday’s tech column?
BILL: Some call it micro-blogging. Others call it an addiction. But these days, when someone says the Internet is all atwitter with activity, they’re not kidding. Tod Maffin will be by to explain the phenomenon of “Presence” on the Internet. Later in the show.
INTRO: Here’s sometime a little hard to imagine. Pretend that every half hour, you have to enter a little something about yourself and post it publicly on the Internet. What you’re eating at that moment, what project you’re working on, and so on. Sound crazy? Well thousands of Canadians are doing it, and it’s all because of a new phenomenon known as “micro-blogging.” The CBC’s technology columnist Tod Maffin is here to shed a little light on this peculiar behaviour.
1. JUST WHEN WE GOT BLOGGING FIGURED OUT, ALONG COMES ITS REPLACEMENT — ALREADY?!
Not actually a replacement. Most like a compliment. We know about blogs now — these are those online journals, some are personal and like diaries, others are more like Internet newspapers. And bloggers write articles they call Posts. On my blog I write a post maybe a couple of times a week. And it’s usually small, maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs. And people can follow my writings by following my blog. That’s where blogging is still today. Now along comes this concept of Micro-Blogging where, instead of spending a bit of time composing a Post, these folks are using a whole new set of web sites to literally update what’s called their “Status.” A single line or two of information.
2. DO THEY POST THESE UPDATES ON THEIR BLOGS?
No, there are actually separate web sites that aggregate all these. The first to do this is a site called Twitter. And they all basically work like Twitter. You find a friend of yours who uses the service and you Subscribe to their Feed of updates. It doesn’t cost any money. It just means that a little program is going to check their web site of updates every couple of minutes and when they post something, I get a little note flashing up on my screen displaying whatever they entered.
3. THIS SOUNDS A LOT LIKE INSTANT MESSENGERS.
It’s similar, but there’s a big difference here. With an instant messenger, you send notes out to specific people. You have a list of your friends and you select one and send them a short message. Kind of like sending a telegram instead of a letter. And usually the message is part of a conversation, like “Did you get the files I sent you?” or “Where do you want to go for drinks after work?” With micro-blogging sites like Twitter, you aren’t directing your message at any one person, you broadcast it out to EVERYONE who follows your feed! In my case, I have 174 people who follow my feed. So if I were to post a note in Twitter saying “Can anyone send me a link to a good upload site?”, they ALL get it.
4. THEN AREN’T PEOPLE BEING BOMBARDED BY THESE LITTLE UPDATE MESSAGES FROM THEIR FRIENDS ALL THE TIME?
Yep! And that’s certainly been one of the problems with Twitter and Pownce and Jaiku and all the sites like them. I only follow about 25 people and, quite frankly, if they post TOO often, I’ll drop them. But in most cases, people are starting to use it responsibly — sending a message out to let people know they’re selling something, or that they’ve put a new post up on their blog. Something that you wouldn’t necessarily want to litter people’s inboxes with, but stuff you still want them to know.
5. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW THIS COULD BE ADDICTIVE. IT SOUNDS IRRITATING TO ME.
invu from someone in downtown Vancouver who is addicted to twitter etc. — is this you? email me!
6. HOW BIG A DEAL IS THIS, DO YOU THINK. WILL WE ALL BE MICRO-BLOGGING AT SOME POINT?
No, of course not. There are always going to be people who want to stay offline and, quite frankly, the more invasive this technology gets like this, the more people tend to shy away from it. But we’re already seeing forms of non-voluntary micro-blogging. For instance the wildly-popular social networking site Facebook has this kind of function built into it. They call it a status message. And when you log in, you can put a little note about your status. So for instance, mine right now reads “Tod is talking on the radio.” But Facebook also tracks what you DO on the site and alerts your friends to that too. Say you comment on a photo, or add an application, or remove information about your political leanings. Facebook reports that to anyone you’ve agreed to be your friend on there. On one hand it’s a great way to keep up to date with what your friends are up to, but on the other hand, it can be a little creepy when four people email you because you’ve removed The National from your list of favourite programs.
EXTRO: Tod Maffin is the CBC’s technology columnist. You can hear more about microblogging on HIS blog. You can find a link to it at cbcnerd.com. That’s cbcnerd.com.
Soundbooth CS3
Colin Smith from Adobe gave me a quick tour of a few of their apps from their Production suite. Because I’m a radio guy, I was most excited by Soundbooth CS3. If you’re into audio, have a look at this video. There are some beautiful features to this. (Sadly, it’s single-track only.)
My-Spy
This week’s CBC tech column was about My Spy — a great little Windows application that always checks your bank account balance and, if it spots a withdrawl (from an ATM or a pre-authorized debit) go through, it alerts you right away.
A video of the full-length interview I did with Darren Stevens will be coming shortly.
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Tod Elsewhere
