While Twitter might be on top of the current craze of social networking services at the moment, it’s not without considerable reason. Most skeptics have the same first reaction to it: Why would I bother? While the idea that you post updates in under 140 characters to your “followers” sounds slightly inane, when given a context, Twitter shines like dimes.
Last week, I was at South by South West music convention in Austin, Texas. The event hosts thousands of events over an 8 day period. The visiting clientele are all like-minded people: either interested in film, music and/or technology. One thing you notice about people attending is that almost all of them have an iPhone or Blackberry. Clearly, these savvy Americans are early adopters of new technology and with that comes innovation even beyond what the services were originally intended for. Continue Reading..»
What is is with public figures sharing way too much of their life with us lately? The internet has always been a good medium for ephemeral nuggets of information but since when did it become acceptable to air your professional grievances or personal experiences in public for everybody to read? These days pop stars are less mysterious than ever and it’s not a good thing.
Last week, Erykah Badu had a baby girl. How do we know? Herself and her husband tweeted about the event AS IT HAPPENED. At first, she began with “Morning, I’m in labor” before telling her then 4500 followers (it’s doubled since) how long was between contractions. As Erykah prepared to have the baby, her husband, producer Jay Electronica kept things going on Twitter – “Labor has begun. Stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We’re waiting for the midwife to show.” He followed that with updates on her water breaking, how much she had dilated and then bizarrely this – “I see the head, full of hair.” After the pregnancy, the couple posted updates extolling their experiences and they later announced the newborn’s name on Twitter.
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This Friday, if you pick up the Day and Night you’ll find my take on that conundrum but I wanted to share with you some responses I received from Twitter users to the question – What the best thing about Twitter?, which hopefully will help you understand a little bit why people are so enamoured with the service.
