My angle on Twitter is very similar to the chunk below that I quoted from Dave.
My initial reaction to Twitter was "damn that's narcissistic." But some people I respected liked it so I tried it. It took a week or so, but then I got it. It's not business networking, it's probably social networking, but that's too dry and clinical of a term. It's people connecting as people, not as workers or professionals or business contacts, but as people. The vast majority of people that I follow are people that I have had a face-to-face conversation with. I was curious, so I counted. I follow 46 people. I've shared a beer, or had a moment, or talked about UX stuff with 36 of those. The rest I've had online contact with, or are people in my city's network, plus a couple of fanboy follows. But my main point is, I use Twitter to follow people that I like as people. Many of them/you I've met at conferences, and really enjoyed the conversations/interactions we've had, but only get to see once every year or two. Sure, we're in the same industry and career opportunities may happen, but I'm also interested in the other hours of the day. It's the old definition of "friends". How are the kids? What movies have you seen? How was that vacation? Life really should take priority over work, and Twitter blends the two in interesting ways. I'll bet that most people who follow each other met through work somehow, but now they're sharing life. So when I tweet, I'm sharing moments in my life. When I read, I'm glimpsing moments in others' lives. So what have I learned? The folks at Adaptive Path really like each other and hang out beyond work. Thomas travels a lot, but has had some medical issues in the family recently. Dave is enthusiastic and doesn't sleep. Brian and Lee tend to have a sweet outlook on life. Livia loves food but is forgetting Portuguese. Dan plays cello. In the end, these things stick with me more than the buzzwords du jour. So in that spirit, I have to go make some dinner. Farfelle with parmesan tonight. See you in Savannah! Bill On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:36:14, dave malouf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To that end, for me it is about blurring my professional more and > more into my personal and as a tool for bringing my personal life > into my professional. The later means that if I have Twitter open at > work and I'm scanning personal friend's tweets I get a new area of > contact with my personal that I wouldn't have had before, namely in > my professional space. The opposite is also true as I tweet as much > about my personal life as I do my professional life, so colleagues > like yourselves learn all about my kid as much as about my class on > IxD. > > To my comment about entertainment. I think the main point I was > making there, is about "seriousness". One of the advantages of all > this stuff is that it is about personal choice and personal > expression. Yes, it can lead to better networking capabilities > (LinkedIn and Facebook have been great for that), but they are all > also about letting loose a bit. It is about letting loose the notion > of privacy, creating more of a swiss-cheese effect in the walls that > surround you. Sometimes you might regret a hole or two, but for the > most part it is pretty cool. > > -- dave ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
