One of the biggest stories in the tech world in 2008 has been Twitter. I was at first quite down on Twitter, but have since changed my mind. It’s a mix of a social network (like Facebook/MySpace) and a communications tool (like email/texting).
The best way to describe it is through this short YouTube video:
Now go sign up for Twitter and then follow me.
I was against Twitter at the beginning because of Kathy Sierra’s influence. Her post (circa 2006) pointed out that if you’re trying to achieve “flow” in your work Twitter can be quite detrimental as friends’ updates will always be interrupting you.
But I’ve found that when I need to I can just turn off the Twitter application. When I don’t need to achieve that flow it’s interesting to listen in to what friends and others are discussing. If you’ve got a lot of followers, then they can serve as quite a good group to “crowdsource” questions to! (I’ve seen people asking for advice on office space, restaurants, and more.)
In the end, I highly encourage you at least try it out. If you’re on Facebook you can link any Twitter updates you send to your Facebook status, so you only have to type your “status” once and have it link everywhere. Nice…
Jed Christiansen 