3 Days of Twitter

Ignoring all the protests of my logic, I joined the bandwagon three days ago. And here's a travelogue of twitter.

First of all, i've to say that I joined with a negative attitude. In fact my first tweet was "Why did I join this 140 character idiocy?". Anyway first few minutes was spend learning the basics:

• @somebody means I'm mentioning them; this is a public tweet, not a private message.
• D somebody means I'm private messaging someone. It stand for Direct messaging.
• RT something, is basically forwarding of tweets. Usually, username of original poster is included.
• #topic is basically a very loose categorization system. As far as I know, there is no list of all topics nor is there fixed topics. Anything u feel like can be a topic. The idea is that when we search for #topic, we get all the tweets with that topic, irrespective of who wrote it. I still don't understand how it is different from normal word search.
• tinyurl.com/xxxx Most urls entered in twitter is auto converted to short URL to save characters. Some tweeting applications do it for us.

That brings me to another thing, the tweeting apps. There are a huge number of apps out there, for every concievable platform from Windows, Linux, Mac to iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and even the most basic java phones. Finding the right one is going to be a problem. I found the online interface good enough but I'm still searching for a lightweight client. (My current client ada takes nearly 55 MB RAM)

Some things I noticed about twitter:

Twitter is NOT a social connectivity platform. Its more of a news gathering app. No, its not even that, its something undefinable: it's twitter. Here it is OK to follow somebody you don't know, unlike in social networks where it is recommended that you know who you befriend.

Also, it is virtually impossible to read all the tweets by everyone you follow. I follow only 13 people and out of this only 4 are active tweeters (is that what it's called?). Even then, the updates come in so frequently, that after staying away for a day or so, it is IMPOSSIBLE to catch up. But I think you're not supposed to be reading everything. Twitter is kinda in-th-moment kind of thing. You read whats going on and respond to that. You can get at-the-moment news this way. This is what I understood.

Also, twitter is too addicting after a certain level. Like I said, people u follow tweets so frequently that you're drawn to the computer to frequently check it so as not to miss anything.

And one thing I found is that most active tweeters suffer from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). These people tweet for tweeting sake. Most of the times, it is inane things like what their cat had for breakfast. But again I think that is part of the twitter culture.