begin quoting Bob La Quey as of Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 03:07:52PM -0700: > On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 5:51 PM, SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > begin quoting Todd Walton as of Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 06:54:29PM -0500: > >> What? You're not going to explain what's at that link? > >> > > Slow-motion IRC. > > Nope. That's what I thought at first but that's not it.
There are actually several different sub-communities in twitter, it seems. There's the story-tellers (which is how I started following twitters many months ago) at one extreme, who don't respond to anyone, and then there are the mass-followers at the other extreme, who seem to only respond to others. (And a whole bunch in between and a few off at right angles.) > Think about the follower/following networks. You just > cannot do that for every user with IRC. See Twitter doesn't seem to be doing that well at it either. It'll be interesting to see if twitter can scale as well as IRC without adopting some of IRC's conventions. > http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/18/faqIsDecentralizedTwitterJ.html Interesting. I agree that everyone's experience is different. However, this does not really distinguish twitter from IRC. The folks who work on twitter consider it a micro-blogging system; I can buy that -- and it makes a lot of sense, too. How a sizable number of people *use* twitter, however, is not necessarily this way. The author claims that IRC is very symmetric, but I hold that the author is quite incorrect there. "...if I listen to you, then you listen to me. And vice versa." is, well, wrong. Or if not wrong, then not really right. IRC *defaults* to listen-to-everyone; on the other hand, twitter defaults to listen-to-noone. Upon reflection, this might be the key difference, and would explain the (currently) low levels of trolls and flamewars. > Twitter is actually a real time notification service, or > will be if they ever get the scaling worked out. As such > it will be hugely useful. I am looking at apps based on > that functionality. Meh. There are real-time notification services out there that do a much better job; it seems that twitter is trying to emulate one with a really poor underlying architecture. > As twitter chat it will be hugely popular. Why? Because > people all over the world love to engage in idle chatter. Hel-lo! IRC? Of course, the one advantage twitter has (over IRC) is that it can be done via a cell phone. But given the advent of the iPhone, I'm not really sure that's going to be much of an advantage in a couple of years. > The less content the better. Have you ever watched Fiipinos > texting? This will likely turn into a billion user global > network. Quite possibly -- the 140 character limit creates a sort of surreality that's amusing and (potentially) a framework for creativity. (But then, I'm one of those wackos who think that limits HELP art. Crazy, innit?) The stuff without content isn't really interesting; it's the stuff that obviously has content, but is crammed into short bits of text that's interesting. Glimpses of content convey shards of meaning, like poetry under a strobe. Can't say I've watched filipinos texting; but most of my texting is really rather bland and unamusing. (I blame the keyboard.) > The company "twitter" may or may not survive though. > > But twitter will. Very likely. It's amusing. -- The adventures of Othar Tryggvassen are quite entertaining. Stewart Stremler -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
