I am very ambivalent about Twitter and have pondered the pro's and con's. To be really clever I was going to Tweet these arguments for and against; however, on trying to reapply to Twitter (they remembered my name,etc.!), I was temporarily locked out because I couldn't remember my password and tried too many times to sign in!! Imagine, at my age being locked out of Twitter.
In the meantime, I'll have to blog it the old fashioned way. Arguments for Twitter (in 140 characters or less):
1. good way to share ideas, technologies, and links (you can even make the links smaller)
2. for survival in tricky spots, e.g. waterless in the middle of the desert (c'mon there's always Twellow)
3. brevity is the soul of wit
4. you can always ignore the "What are you doing" prompt, the Twitter police won't get you (they only lock you out).
5. you can "retweet" to share someone's ideas: "retweeting@username" then paste
Arguments against Twitter:
1. your thoughts are stored in your account in perpetuity; they may come back to haunt you
2. the English language is taking a big hit; who cares about grammar and spelling? pidgin here we come.
3. TwitterLit twitters the 1st lines of books. Sometimes the power of a book falls beyond the 1st 140 characters.
4. even news sometimes needs more than 140 characters for the full story
5. in Twitter for Librarians, King said "you can check out potential colleague's twitter feed to see if you'd personally like them or not" (I don't like what he just said)
So, 5 pro's and 5 con's; the deciding factor will have to be whether or not I can re-enter Twitter or will forever be persona non Twitter.
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Actually 'RT' is the preferred method to retweet something.
ReplyDeleteOnce/if you get back into your account, and once/if you decide to make a habit of it, you should get a better client -- the Twitter web site is unusable.
For the PC, I recommend tweetdeck.
I think Twitter is lots of fun and can be a very useful method of communication. Glad you are taking the time to think about it instead of quickly dismissing the possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your #5 in the con list. Using Twitter as your only basis to make a decision about a person you've never met is a tad ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on some of your points--but Twitter is a fun experiment I think, even if you don't ultimately find it useful.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine wrote a good article on Twitter that adds a few items to your pros and cons. Check out: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/story/68505.html
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading the tweets of the Hokule'a crew as they navigated using traditional polynesian methods from Hawaii to Palmyra and back. The best part was the conversations they had with school classes in which students asked questions like, "do you fish for food?" and "Did you see lots of pollution in the ocean?" The crew was so respectful of the kids and answered very thoughtfully. It was almost like being there.
ReplyDeletehttp://twitter.com/HokuleaWWV
This isn't about Twitter, but I just wanted to thank you for your help in identifying the bird in my yard. I wanted it to be a juvenile black-crowned night heron, though...
ReplyDelete