1 post tagged “thesocial”
Welcome to the social, as Microsoft might say. I have started Twittering under my customary appellation, nvalvo. So far I only have two friends, possibly the only people I know who use the service.
If you haven't heard this thing (www.twitter.com) is a strange new piece of social software that lives out much of its life in the "mobile" arena, that is, you know, in the world. The service asks a simple, kind of casually-existential question: "what are you doing?" You reply, in fewer than 140 characters. Anyone paying attention to you at that time gets to know. Your "tweets" can be either private, or can contribute to a kind of public record of everyone's tweets.
One can "follow," "leave," and "nudge" one's friends via SMS, IM, web, XML syndication, or API'd desktop apps like the tidy little Twitterific (shown above). A rather simple command syntax facilitates this. Texting "follow nvalvo" to 40404 (their SMS number) would grant you access to what I type in response to that question. If you actively want to know what I am up to, you can "nudge" me by typing, you got it, "nudge nvalvo." That sends me a message.
I envision this as social coordination tool; the 'flashmobbing of everyday life.' Right now, the things people send seem to be immediate and physical. I might twitter right now: "I am taking a break from researching early modern tragedy to write a blog entry on the couch." I am more interested in it as a tool for coordinating real-life social events. Realtime evite.
Consequently, there are improvements I would like to see: I want to be able to select my friends in groups, for instance by location. There are status updates that I would want to send to everyone I know irrespective of location ("I finished my coursework!" [actually almost true!] or "I really like and recommend the work of Tom Zé." [true!]), status updates I would want to send to friends in the Bay Area ("party saturday my house" [not actually true]) and status updates I would want to send to people who either live in the mission or are physically there right now ("I am having a bloody mary at El Rio. Swing by!" [I am on my couch]). Space here, is really time: I want to send long-durational status changes to all kinds of people, mid-term plans to people who will need some planning time, and short-term plans to people who, if free, might just join me for a beer or burrito twenty minutes later.
This will be awesome until the spammers arrive.
