Week 4: iTwitter

I have been doing some more research on Twitter since my last Blog. Working on Group one, Brian talked about Twitter; we had to investigate the reason why one would join the Twitter world. My last comments about Twitter were not of praise, but rather of confusion.

My findings on Twitter have changed.

I Twitter not.
Microblogging in general is changing the way interact, communicate and consume. The self-imposed pressure to blog something every night, or even a few times a week, melts away. Twitter restriction is 140-character length which means there’s never any expectation for thoughts be fully formed. Maybe that’s yet another sign of cultural acceleration and the cheaper snack-sized media info size, but it seems to work for many.

Twitter has a potential to become a partial cure of our ongoing failure to actually read anything. Hundreds of feeds in the RSS reader, thousands of bookmarks, and I rarely look at anything that does not find its way into my inbox. I signed up for a Twitter account last week and so far I have four followers, an Australian professor of Eco-Studies, Dell Outlet, A self-improvement guru and Surfer magazine. How did they find me?
Looking back at my Internet habits, I realized that it tracks my digital paths (nothing new here), on my Internet habits. My profile says I surf, and Twitter looking for Dell Coupons and noted that I volunteer for local ClimateWorks.

Do I follow?
I am following a few people and companies, and so far I used a coupon from Dell.

Again Twitter can become another inbox, a more playful than the first-- essential nonetheless. Twitter has clicked for me in a way no other social network has. The one drawback that applies is that you have to follow and keep checking on updates which means you have to be tied to your desk at all times otherwise the update gets pushed down further each time. You can always track by clicking on the follower you are trying to follow though.

After reading some reviews and notes on Twitter I found out that it is a hybrid between all Web 2.0, not quite IRC, not quite IM, not quite blogging, not quite RSS. It’s all of those things synergized, yet still http-based.
I am still waiting and I will give it time, so far what do you guys think?