Yesterday I met Tom Coates, one of the UK’s early bloggers, when we were both being quizzed by a mobile phone manufacturer’s team. They’d been having a series of sessions through the day and in to the evening with various Alpha Geeks discussing how we use, and would like to use our mobile phones. Tom’s an enthusiastic and interesting guy, presently helping Yahoo design and build stuff. He’s passionate about web 2.0 and social media, and at one point in the conversation got very excited about an application called Twitter. He described it as the kind of application that shouldn’t really work, or be of any practical use, but seems quite addictive, and certainly seems to be gaining popularity. He uses it all the time.
With Twitter you set up a public or a private page where you post a line to say what you are doing, either from your PC (browser or IM), or by SMS text message from your phone. You can view all public messages, or watch someone’s site in particular. You can watch a friend or colleague and even get their posts sent by SMS to your phone. It’s a kind of gossip and instant consciousness oriented mini blog. I’ve just been receiving text messages telling me that Euan Semple has been tucking in to smoked salmon Benedict for breakfast somewhere in Washington, that he’s thinking of walking over to see the White House, and then commenting about a conversation going on at his blog.
Now is this of any use, or is it just the web equivalent of an exchange by the coffee machine? Dennis believes it’s just for people with too much time on their hands. Over at Lifehack, they’ve got a few suggestions on how this might be of practical use. In any case, I’ll be tracking the phenomenon, because I have a sneaky suspicion it will be around for a while.
Update: A few seconds after I posted this, Tom “twittered” that he was having afternoon tea with neb at maison bertaux, and we should feel free to join them. Too far from St. Albans, but it might have been useful.
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