for me (facebook is) the digital equivalent of walking into a very brightly lit warehouse full of all the people I have ever met in my life wanting to show me their holiday photos all at the same time :P

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it, picking their nose and chewing it, chewing it, chewing it ...

Nah. "Tweeting". That's what everybody is doing.

Twitter.com has been big for quite a long time, especially within the geek community, and now it's gone well and truly "main-stream". You can't move for tweets from Dave Grohl telling you he's 'just had some toast', or Gorden brown announcing that 'the downstairs loo is blocked' (made them up btw :P).

It seems to have happened very, very quickly. I remember when I set up a twitter account for 'the Wombats' just a few months ago in November - I did a search for other popular bands and 'celebrities' on twitter. Zilch. I couldn't find a single one.

Everybody 'appy?

Like all social apps, I have a love-hate relationship with them. I'm on Facebook but find it all a little overwhelming and a bit of a chore - for me it's the digital equivalent of walking into a very brightly lit warehouse full of all the people I have ever met in my life wanting to show me their holiday photos all at the same time :P

I remember seeing an old school friend in my local supermarket, and our conversation finished with me saying: "Yeah. Good to see yer. Facebook me." Facebook me!? What had I become?! I cringed as soon as I said it, wanting to chuck myself face-first into jars of Dolmio sauce. The shame.

But Facebook can be very useful - keeping you in-touch with friends who live far away. I even know of it helping someone deal with bereavement. It's no utopia, but then nor is 'the real world' (whatever the hell that actually is).

Anyway, this isn't a post about Facebook. Let's get back on to 'the word bird' ...

A quick flap and a chirp

I'm not going to explain what twitter is - if you don't already know you must have been stranded on a desert island or living in a cave, or living in a cave on a desert island. But if you don't know - good old wikipedia to the rescue: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

One thing I have realised is that twitter offers a different experience to different people - depending on who you are, what you do, whether you are following many, are followed by many, and who you follow. For some it is about getting as many followers as possible, while for others it's simply just a very short personal diary - just a status update.

I use it as a simple status update - but I try and add a splash of humour where I can. I also try and post interesting things that I find about what I do (as I realise that many of my followers are also in the same profession as me), plus a sprinkling of tweets about my most recent blog entries and portfolio updates (but nowt spammy). That's about it for me in terms of updates (some drunken nonsense and utter bore-fests do sneak in there also).

In terms of who I follow: Friends, family, colleagues, industry 'big-guns' in my profession, and a handful of interesting celebs.

I was thinking that perhaps twitter should consider changing their tagline: "What are you doing?" - with the ability to reply and direct message people, you are doing more than just "updating your status".

If you don't use a desktop app for tweeting, but would like to, I recommend TweetDeck. Twhirl isn't too bad either.

Anyway ...

Why it's sweet to tweet

• If you are following some of the "heavy-weights" in your profession, you can get an inside line on the latest industry developments
• You can give and receive instant and quick feedback on said developments
• You can ask questions and, therefore, it can help solve problems quickly and effectively
• And by the same token, you can help others
• You can "vent"

What makes me less than chirpy

• When you follow too many you can drown in feathers :P As if keeping up with email messages wasn't enough!
• Celebrity tweets are often meaningless replies to their thousands of fan-tweets (sorry @wossy, I un-followed you for that very reason)
• Some feel the need to have full on debates over twitter (and I was guilty of that a few times to start with) - not the right environment as it will annoy other followers, and the 140 character limit is just not enough for that kind of thing - the character limit can also make you sound abrupt and spiky
• It can be distracting when trying to get some 'head-down' work done
• It is already being abused and exploited by spammers. Irritating bastards!

Soaring like an eagle, or waddling like a turkey to the slaughter house?

The question is: will it last?

I think so. The novelty may wear off for the celebrity set, and wholesale updates may become less in frequency over time, but I think twitter is far too useful for it to just die.

Like many web apps it is adapting and adding "extras" so that it is future proof and versatile. That's my gut feeling, but who knows. The web changes very quickly, with trends extinguished at the same speed they caught fire.

One thing does concern me, being someone who has lived most of their life in the countryside: the more tweets = the more chance of getting bird poo in your hair ...

Terrible, terrible puns :P Oh, btw - you can follow me at http://twitter.com/kevadamson