Previously on New Adventures in Software: Dan signs-up for Twitter to try to figure out the attraction of self-stalking.

I’m starting to get a feel for Twitter now.  Not so much in terms of finding it useful, or even particularly interesting, but I have a better appreciation of what it is.

So what is Twitter?

Twitter inhabits a space somewhere between a feed reader and an instant messaging client.  If you use it via the Twitter website it shows its more reader-like tendencies.  It aggregates messages in a very static way.  You just go there and see what’s been said since you last checked it.  If you use one of the myriad clients (today’s client is Twhirl), the experience is closer to using MSN Messenger or similar.  Messages pop up in the corner of your screen, not in real-time but via polling.

I rarely have IM programs running because I find them to be incredibly damaging to productivity.  Conversations spawning at random, all requiring attention, distract you from whatever you were trying to do on the computer.  Twitter is not quite as distracting.  Messages arrive but you don’t have to respond, whereas on IM it would be rude to ignore them.  Then again, on Twitter, the messages usually aren’t directed at you.  You are just tapping into other people’s stream-of-conciousness thoughts.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the real attraction of Twitter, though people might not like to admit it.  It’s nice to get these little reassurances that you are not alone in the world, right now there are other people out there doing “stuff”.  You select a set of people that you like, or admire, or find interesting and you tune into their stuff.  The nature of that stuff is unimportant, just so long as you are in the loop.

Of course, there is also a conversational aspect to Twitter.  The people you are following might not have addressed their messages to you, they may not even know that you exist, but you can jump in at any point and respond to something that they have said.  This is the “global conciousness” aspect that Twitter fans highlight.  Yes, you can ignore what your parents and teachers told you and talk to strangers.  It’s not a proper conversation though.  It lacks the depth of e-mail and it lacks the immediacy of instant messaging.

You also get to see the conversations that don’t involve you.  This is incredibly irritating when somebody you are following replies to somebody you are not following. It’s like when you are on a train and the person next to you is talking on their mobile phone and you are forced to listen to one half of a conversation. You just get some out-of-context sentence.  You can try to track down the original message, but that’s just one more distraction.  It would be better if the Twitter clients defaulted to not showing you messages that were addressed to other people.

Today’s Highlights

I now have 13 followers, and I am following 19 people.  It seems that there are a few people who signed up for Twitter in response to my original post.  This is no longer an experiment, it’s a movement.  They too are trying to see what all the fuss is about.

I also have to abandon the “nobody in the real world uses Twitter” argument now since David has signed up and I can confirm that he is a real person that I know.  Go on, you can follow him too.  Maybe he’ll say something.

I’m not going to write a blog post for every single day of this 2-week experiment.  I will report back again in a few days.