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BTW: this topic didn't show up in your rss-feed (and therefor friendfeed)
If it's a group conversation keep it in the stream, if it's one on one, take it to DM.
It's honestly not that difficult IMHO.
It is possible to have conversations, it's just a different kind of conversation.
I still think the Twitter format has much to commend it, and one could argue that adding more 'conversationality' would harm its current simplicity.
We need to build, from the ground up, what people *want* Twitter to be. Nobody else has gotten this right. In my opinion, the real innovation of Twitter is the unidirectional follow instead of the bidirectional friend relationship. All the rest is just IRC. If someone built an IRC-like service with some sort of standard API where everyone had their own personal "room" (feed) and they could choose whose messages went into that "room" (follows), and the reply metadata being annotated onto the stream (replies, etc.), then you could have a real killer service on your hands.
:D nmw
-The sky is blue #skycolor
-What do you mean like that? #skycolor
Twitter could provide an extra let's say 10 character space for tagging.
stuff amusing.
http://dmiessler.com/blog/where-twitter-fits
someone - i think some french writer, but then again i may be biased - offered his apologies for his "writing" as he could have been more concise but did not have time. there is truth in that. the more concise one needs to be, the more time one needs to have. therein lies the twitter conundrum. as the juxtaposition of the 140 character limit and the "firehose" flavor of the platform make for a very difficult "squaring" of the circle. i suspect more platforms/technologies/solutions will hit us and hit at thousands and thousands of years of evolutjon as it relates to how our brain functions.
twitter et al is/are (not sure of the grammar here) changing our brain plasticity, whether we like it or not.
Would threading in Twitter (or better client support for "in_reply_to") help? Maybe some of the time. But you'll still have knuckleheads replying in the wrong thread.
I've had good conversations via Twitter (and Identica). But they must have been really annoying to my followers (such as they are) who didn't follow users on all sides of the conversations. Actually, I know they were annoying because I've seen plenty such half-conversations.
Sometimes Twitter feels like it should be conversational -- like IM -- because it's so easy to fart out a 140 character tweet. But Twitter isn't IM, and public tweets are often not a good medium for back-and-forth conversation.
Frankly, I think you nailed it. If a follower wants to turn a tweet into a conversation, DM (or -- god forbid -- email) is probably the way to proceed.
Unless someone is just trying to use their Twitter stream to make it look like they have Dave Winer's ear! ;-)
conversation, beyond grunting "hello everybuddy," is so hard in Twitter.
There is no option for seeing replies by people you do not follow. (Twitter states that this is to discourage spam.) That's why we need "track."
You don't need to satisfy everyone. Conversing on Twitter isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. It's admirable that you might have a desire to satisfy every request, but the way most people use the tool is to wade into the tweet stream when they have some time, splash around a bit, then wade out and let it keep flowin'.
People will prefer intermittent response to no response at all.
I think the heart of this is a complaint that some people don't communicate well on Twitter. Assuming you're a fairly smart guy, you'd probably set a good example for them if you tried.
It's a convention I've picked up due to Twitter's lack of threading. FriendFeed more closely satisfies the threaded conversations for me. Not sure I'd want to see things overly threaded like a discussion forum.
I find the noise on Twitter (and FriendFeed for that matter if you don't filter well) horrendous. I still think people should twitter their professional lives independently of their personal ones for obvious reasons. For instance, on a personal learning network side of things, I couldn't care less what a person had for dinner, but I do care about an informative blog entry. I think we'll hear more of this as these apps become more mainstream and used for content aggregation.
If your message does not fit 140 chars either you are prolix or you are not for twitter.
In any case you can write a blog post as a response and throw the link on the twitter "bus".
Somebody will notice it. :)
My 2$
But I don't just want to use it for broadcasting messages because I thought that's what RSS is for.
I flip flop in my opinion as to what is better. I think maybe I need to find a way to tie my twitter friends to IM accts so I can take conversations there. But then it's not a public searchable conversation and that's sort of the point most of the time
lightweight interactive version.
When we started to build the Quired platform back in 2005 the thought we had was to create threaded experiences of media to our community. Developing this concept has taken so much longer than we thought all the while witnessing the explosion of Twitter in the mean time.
We are building a follow system into Quired which will initially allow users to follow conversations of other profile members in their blogs but within the next 6 months will allow the ability to follow a conversation related to a specific product, service, event or idea.
This is where we think social media is moving but not in a micro blogging format. (Of course we could be wrong) We feel the summary of the blog would allow for a visitor to determine if they are interested to engage with the conversation. If so they can click to view more of the post and then look at all of the related pages, video, audio and photos linked to the post.
When it comes to direct conversations with a follower, we are working on tools to help the collaborative process such as creating a blog thread around an idea and letting followers participate in the related conversation.
Twitter nails it when it comes to sharing. One of the biggest benefits of Twitter is how easy it is to update without validation. I think this is maybe on of the problems though. When you make it so easy, you lose the texture of a conversation and less of a reason to engage. Just like your article states, how do you have a conversation this way.
One fix would be to create a link inside the tweet that references the specific post the conversation is related to but the conversations are so fleeting and limited it seems almost impossible to herd the cats.
For Quired, blogging and social media is more about the relationships that can be built through these tools. That is why we like the term "Conversation Marketing" better than "Social Media".
We want our users and followers to engage with the thread and learn something new or teach something new. Chatter is ok as long as it leads to moving something forward. Whether it be a better feeling about yourself or the purchase of a product you never realized you needed.
As a society, we have so much to learn and share. I would like to see the tools evolve to where the technology dissapears and we capture the feeling of a family gathering around an old radio to listen to their favorite program together (even thought they may not be together) or that great conversation with a neighbor on the stoop.
Before the internet, did we really need to know what our neighbor ate for breakfast. Or were the most enjoyable moments, when they shared something we never knew or something they bought that we ended up having to buy.
And why can't we embrace wanting to monetize conversations through these tools?
Maybe it is the term "Social" media that is so closely associated with community that scares the "Social Media" masses. One thing for certain is that communities do not thrive without commerce taking place in their community.
When you post the question "What is Twitter used for". What else could it be used for other than helping share information between parties. Just the fact of what it is should lend itself to be better at what it should do.
I certainly admire Twitter for creating an incredible vehicle though. As with anything it needs to evolve.
Quired certainly knows about the importance of change.
the sky is blue : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky#Sky_luminance_... ;-)
or maybe use tinyurl/similar.
basically if it's a complicated explanation, you give a brief summary & a link to somewhere where you(or someone else) explains the detail ...
3 is usually the best idea, as if it seems unclear to them, they're likely to have provided more details, although I find twitter a rather disorientating too. On the other hand, it is nice and simple to use :-)
One critique; it's like soundbites on network tv. No real content, just teasers. Nader would hate it.
Couldn't this be a sign that you're talking too much? If your discourse is proceeding at such a pace that the majority of people haven't had time to receive, understand, and respond to your messages, is the solution (assuming the problem is 'I'd like to have a conversation, but I can't.') for everyone else to speed up, or you to slow down?
Congratulations on that. Reminds me of what the Austrian king said to Mozart
in the movie Amadeus. He loved the music but there was just one thing wrong
with it -- "Too many notes." Just get rid of some notes and all will be
better. Poor Mozart was left befuddled becase he truly admired the king, and
didn't understand what he had just said.
You consider it an inane idea because it's a solution to a problem you've been told you have, but don't really want to solve. The truth is you don't want to have a conversation on twitter. Only 9 of your last 200 tweets mention another twitter user at all. You're much more interested in talking *at* people on twitter than you are *with* them.
conversation FOr example I could make all the people who follow me also
follow everyone else that follows me, then it would work conversationally.
(Do you really think I could do that? Then I have a bridge to sell you.) Or
we could all join a mail list, if that's what we wanted, but we could have
done that and didn't. I'm talking with you now, even though I think *you*
insulted me, so I do like to talk to people despite what you say. In the
right medium. Not Twitter, maybe for you but not for me -- hence the title
of my piece, which I hope you read and considered before telling me how to
live my life. :-)