Gingerly Trying Out Twitter

I've been staying away from Twitter for fear that it would eat my life. But I guess I have at least to try it. So, Dear Reader, feel free to follow my tweets! And tell me who I should follow. Ideally, I want people who tweet something really witty like every second day and who shut up when they have nothing worthwhile to say.

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When I first heard of Twitter, I thought it was the very definition of triviality. Then Twitter completely saved our computer labs during the McAfee screwup a couple weeks ago, by cluing us to the real nature of the problem so we could stop it. Our college would have been without computers for at least a couple days, just before finals. So now I have a different opinion of Twitter.

Resistance is useless! Join us Martin, join usssss...

Seriously though, I was squarely in the camp of "what ubelievable crap is this?" Then I got hooked. The question as always is asking yourself why and for what when starting to use something. In a way Twitter acts as a feed-service, where you get regular updates about interesting news in for instance science and archaeology. The difference is it´s actual people doing the sorting and suggesting, and it´s people you have singled out yourself to follow.

Also, it´s a fun way to keep updated with your friends, no unlike Facebook but without the annoying games and stuff. You can connect your twitterfeed to Facebook, and you can connect your blog to twitter to let more people know when you have blogged.

If you want to find interesting people to follow check in on your followers and see who they are following, and if they retweet something interesting someone else has written consider following that person. If you want followers, start following and retweeting - and post interesting link tips and updates about your activites.

I can't get Facebook's Twitter app to work. It simply says "wrong password" when I try to log on.

Not sure if it would be a good idea to Twitter my entire blog feed when so many of my followers are already regulars on the blog. Maybe better to tweet only the best entries, each with a relevant hash tag?

Tweet the entries with actual content, skip entries like these. Even if your CURRENT readership don't need twitter to follow your blog, maybe future ones will love that possibility. Does Seed's blog engine allow for a Twitter widget?

Anything is possible in software given the resources to hire the right people. But Seed MG hasn't recovered yet from the recession. The paper mag is actually history now. But Sb's traffic is booming. We may actually be the company's main source of revenue.

You might as well tweet your entire feed: you're not producing so much content that you'd flood our twitter feeds.

As for people to follow, you'll find out: try a few and remove them if they're boring.

I had a look at PZ's Twitter feed. The automatic tweets about his blog entries appear to have a very low readability: many are quite incomprehensible as Pharyngula's headlines are often obscure. Such a Twitter feed just seems to duplicate the RSS feed that PZ's steady readers would already tend to subscribe to?

Such a Twitter feed just seems to duplicate the RSS feed that PZ's steady readers would already tend to subscribe to?

Oh, you mean like Twitter itself is just a duplicate of Facebook's status updates, only with less letters, annoying hashtags, and the fact that we now have to listen to newscasters talking about tweets instead of news? What's next, an Aardvarcheology Formspring account?

Seriously, I love the blog, I've just reached saturation on the words "twitter," "tweet," and "Justin Bieber," and would be content to have all of them vanish from the face of the Earth.

By Rob Monkey (not verified) on 10 May 2010 #permalink

I'm a little surprised at the amount of re-tweeted URLs. I don't need more to read, I need less. I want standalone tweets, not tweets that just point me towards other stuff that somebody finds worthwhile.

Martin, if you like such tweets, I suggest you follow George Hrab. Name should ring a bell I guess. His Tweets are fabulous.

Oh, just followed you and noticed you're already following him. I'll leave the mention for other people.