Chatting a little
October 19th 2009 07:56
Someone on Twitter pointed me towards an interesting blog post by David Mullen, in which the latter writes about five ways in which Twitter makes you smarter.
One of these was that it makes you be concise - in fact there's a certain delight in getting to exactly 140 characters in a tweet. Mullen actually says Twitter will make you a better writer. Well, I guess that's possible considering that having the ability to refine your thoughts down to the basics has a certain value. It's not necessarily a sign of good writing, though, in my opinion. The good use of words, long or short, is a better criterion.
I appreciated more Mullen's first two points which are that Twitter gives you access to different points of view, and, the people you follow point you to great resources you wouldn’t find otherwise.. Certainly this latter is true (it pointed me to Dave Mullen for starters), and I've often found information I would never have come across otherwise.
Of course, as Mullen points out, you have to follow people who provide interesting tweets in the first place.
Talking more of Twitter's disadvantages however, we find that the fifth point (the one about being concise) can also work against you. I jotted a short tweet to someone the other day after we'd both been to the same seminar. So boiled up was he about what had gone on in the question time at the seminar that I received five tweets in reply.
It's at times like that, that that kind of restriction is just a frustration (hey, three 'thats' in a row!). At such times it's perhaps better to turn to chat, a form of communication those of us in what is now generally known as 'social media' tend to forget still exists and still gets used by a great many people. In fact, is by far the preferred method of communication for many.
I was reminded about chat again because I came across a link to live chat software, something that presumably means exactly what it says - though one would suspect that chat has to be 'live' to exist in the first place. Otherwise it's no different to email or Facebook, in the sense that both of those don't tend in their normal functions to allow conversation as chat does.
Facebook has its own chat section of course, but I've found in using it, that people are generally distracted by the other things they're doing on Facebook, and it's not particularly speedy. Gmail has a chat function too, and when I've occasionally used it, it's effective. The good thing about it is you don't have to log into yet another program to use it.
And the other great place for chat is on Skype, which has a great habit of breaking down in terms of actually speaking to someone. Skype Chat has come to the rescue more than a few times in my experience.
One of these was that it makes you be concise - in fact there's a certain delight in getting to exactly 140 characters in a tweet. Mullen actually says Twitter will make you a better writer. Well, I guess that's possible considering that having the ability to refine your thoughts down to the basics has a certain value. It's not necessarily a sign of good writing, though, in my opinion. The good use of words, long or short, is a better criterion.
I appreciated more Mullen's first two points which are that Twitter gives you access to different points of view, and, the people you follow point you to great resources you wouldn’t find otherwise.. Certainly this latter is true (it pointed me to Dave Mullen for starters), and I've often found information I would never have come across otherwise.
Of course, as Mullen points out, you have to follow people who provide interesting tweets in the first place.
Talking more of Twitter's disadvantages however, we find that the fifth point (the one about being concise) can also work against you. I jotted a short tweet to someone the other day after we'd both been to the same seminar. So boiled up was he about what had gone on in the question time at the seminar that I received five tweets in reply.
It's at times like that, that that kind of restriction is just a frustration (hey, three 'thats' in a row!). At such times it's perhaps better to turn to chat, a form of communication those of us in what is now generally known as 'social media' tend to forget still exists and still gets used by a great many people. In fact, is by far the preferred method of communication for many.
I was reminded about chat again because I came across a link to live chat software, something that presumably means exactly what it says - though one would suspect that chat has to be 'live' to exist in the first place. Otherwise it's no different to email or Facebook, in the sense that both of those don't tend in their normal functions to allow conversation as chat does.
Facebook has its own chat section of course, but I've found in using it, that people are generally distracted by the other things they're doing on Facebook, and it's not particularly speedy. Gmail has a chat function too, and when I've occasionally used it, it's effective. The good thing about it is you don't have to log into yet another program to use it.
And the other great place for chat is on Skype, which has a great habit of breaking down in terms of actually speaking to someone. Skype Chat has come to the rescue more than a few times in my experience.
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