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One-Tweet Wonders
theodp writes "TIME has seen-the-future-and-it-is-Twitter. Slate, on the other hand, is more fascinated with the phenomenon of orphaned tweets, the messages left by people who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return (not unlike one-blog-post wonders). While some orphan tweets betray skepticism about microblogging ('I don't get it... what's the point of this thing?'), other one-and-done Twitterers demonstrate keen enthusiasm before disappearing ('I'm here!'), and some tweets hint that tragedy has cut a promising Twittering-life short ('it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?'). Slate notes that studies of Twitter accounts by Harvard and Nielsen suggest the service has been better at signing up users than keeping them, including the one-tweet wonders."
It happens with everything, people try it then forget to go back and continue. Personally I end up tweeting about once a month or two, I really don't care that much about the smaller details in peoples lives. And I've got a few friends who've done the whole orphan tweet thing. Nothing notably funny though, Kinda funny if they start posting now because so many people have started to follow them through the press =)
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
I just don't see this lasting more than another year --- and I think I'm being generous. I honestly can't understand why anyone is fascinated with reading /shrug.
It might be different if the messages were more directed, or useful. But sending messages so "my fans" (subscribers) can read them is just....
No, I have not RTFA, but - I use twitter every single day but have only posted one tweet. I only follow a few interesting people but I now find it invaluable as a way of keeping track of them. I have stopped using facebook - I realise that I now am more interested in seeing what other people say than publishing my own content, I guess a lot of people are like that.
For all the people who hate Twitter, don't get it, like to make remarks about using twitter to inform others of bowel movements, how trivial it is to build it, et cetera:
Please reply to this thread to contain the complaining
Every story even remotely connected to Twitter gets the trolls crawling under their stones, mumbling how much they hate it.
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Makes you wonder how many of these are some sort of throwaway code.
getting ready for cannes == set the date
Printing latest briefing == getting the drugs
Folding shirts == meet at designated spot
and so on.... Seems that twitter would be a great way to use one-time pads and code phrases.....
Twitter (n):
1: A service design to indulge the sense of self importance by posting information that history will care little for.
2: A web site and infrastructure for passing small messages out to an open ended communication channel in which people what are extremely bored and track the likewise boring activities of others.
3: A simple text exchange in which creative people and some regular expressions can generate a swarm-like information network to gauge personal activity. For instance:
"by following a demographic of X a researcher can key in on how people feel about Y topic."
"An automatic event scheduler system can be generated by people tweeting possible event dates in which subscribers through a script can vector in and select an event date in which all or a certain threshold of particpants can agree to."
4: A method by which information is exchanged into a open ended channel. See Broadcast SMS 2.0
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
One possible reason for people to have unused accounts is simple to reserve the name. That is to say, to ensure that nobody can go around tweeting "in their name".
"Good news, everyone!"
And here you are posting in community forum. How very social of you.
Really its a tool. Something like a cross between IM, a mailing list and a personal RSS feed. It has its own niche. If its not useful to you, don't use it. I can only presume all the hate comes from its sudden popularity and the rather stupid name (both of which bring to mind obnoxious teenage fads). Oh well I would think people would be smarter than just hating on a tool b/c of two superficial reasons.
This existed pre-internet. How many bought a diary and wrote one entry? Went out for a run, swim or to the gym once? Read a few pages of War and Peace? Only went to one foreign language lesson? Only bothered with a couple of piano/guitar/trumpet lessons?
While twitter has many problems, the fact that the majority of people tend to play with a new thing and then stop isn't new, or news.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
He said, on a forum.
While you can't subscribe to a tweet stream, you can still access it without having to sign up.
See http://twitter.com/aplusk Or you can get the RSS feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19058681.rss
Actually, you can subscribe to just about any stream of data from twitter with RSS. Of course, most non-techies won't know how to do that, but it's quite possible to be a pure twitter follower with nothing other than an RSS client.
Where twitter accounts do become useful is how they're a bridge between the informal aspects of IRC and IM and the persistence of email. Rather then spamming your friends with email or IM with a link to an interesting news story, you can just tweet it, and give them the control to follow up, ignore, or filter as they see fit.
This is also an example of no compelling reason to use twitter for this. Email or text would both work in this situation.
How so? Say 100 people wanted to get the live scores without waiting for the web page to update. The OP could've created a special-purpose mailing list, walked everyone through signing up, and then deleted it afterward. With texting, I suppose he could've stored all their numbers and texted each one every time someone won a match.
Honestly the only difference I see between twitter and email/text is a lack of security. The information originator cannot control who has access to the feed.
Well, openness and the fact that email and text are one-to-one channels while Twitter (and Facebook) are one-to-many. But other than the access model and the difference between direct communication and broadcasting, yes, they're very much alike.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What's the difference between waiting for a web page to update and waiting for an email to hit your inbox?
In this case, it's the difference between the OP sending the results to everyone listening, and one of those listeners taking the data and uploading it to a website. In other words, between primary and secondary sources.
People know how to use email. Subscribing to a mail list is trivial. Last time I did it it involved sending the word subscribe to an email address. Everyone knows how to do this.
Your mouse-incapable uncle surely doesn't.
You also set up your example is invalid due to the artificial limitations you put on it. Why would you create a one off list? Why not leave the list around for the team?
That's possible, sure, but not in the context of the OP's situation. He was able to send text messages but quite likely not able to set up a mailing list while sitting on the bleachers watching the wrestling.
You're saying rather than doing that trivial step it's some how easier to have people create yet another account, this time with a system they are not familiar with.
You mean, like creating an account on the hypothetical listserv? Why are you under the impression that subscribing to a listserv is inherently easier than subscribing to Twitter?
Email is not one to one. You know you can put a semi colon followed by another address on the To: line right?
I'm pretty new to email, but even I know that it's one-to-one. Adding multiple To: or Cc: or Bcc: entries is functionally identical to sending multiple copies of the message, unless you want to get into gray areas like single instance store on the recipient's end.
Texting, at least for me and I have a bare bare bones phone, is one to many. I can send the same text to multiple people just by selecting multiple recipients.
No. Texting is one-to-one, albeit repeatable. BTW, you might ask your carrier whether sending a single text to 50 recipients is billable as one message or 50. I bet the answer might surprise you.
I ask again. What advantages does it offer over existing technology other than being new?
Well, in the OP's case, it offered the rather huge advantage of letting him send one single SMS to Twitter instead of making him keep track of everyone who was interested so that he could notify each person individually, all without having to set up a listserv in advance and convincing everyone to subscribe to it. You might take note that despite your reasons why it shouldn't work, it did.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?