This scarily accurate visual representation of a twitter trend is by web anthropologist Meg Pickard. It’s obviously tongue in cheek, but it’s close enough to reality for me to mention that it’s not actually from collected data. That would be interesting to see, though, and it’s possible that Meg has the chops to put it together. According to her flickr, she’s “been studying and writing about the anthropology of internet interaction since the mid-90s, blogging since early 2000 and these days looks after social media for The Guardian.”
As Cory on Boing Boing remarks, “Outside of Twitter, this applies to pretty much any popular newsworthy topic…the news quickly moves from ‘we’re telling you about Topic X’ to media coverage of the media coverage of Topic X. See: Twitter’s own coverage in the media currently.”
I should point people to this graph when asked why I’m not on twitter yet. I try to avoid the hump of irrelevence, a term which I hope enters the common lexicon fairly quickly, as much as possible. Besides the meta-dickery, twitter seems to mostly be about what various people had for breakfast. Since I tend to either sleep through the meal or skip it on the way out the door, I only have fairly detached feelings of jealousy tinged with confusion about how other people manage to have so much time in their day.
I’m open, of course, to using twitter. I just haven’t seen a single non-ironic use of it that is any interest to me. I was thinking of setting one up to post art deadlines as I found them, so people could subscribe and keep track of the information, but then I realized that I already do that here… where people can subscribe and keep track of the information.
So I’m not sure I see the point. I can make things as short or longform as I want here, and already have a steady network of commenting and sharing information through google reader. The entire appeal of self publishing information on the internet is that I am not limited in what I create/share/write/post, when/how I do it, and what size it can be shared at – exactly why I don’t keep a blog at sites I don’t have control over and why you are not getting costly print dispaches from me every morning. Why add another service that simply limits me to the short form when I can do it already in one place?
Alisha comment on May 17, 2009 2:48 pm:
This supports what I have thought about twitter all along by have not been able to vocalize from the fuzzy part of my brain that isn’t used for better things than thinking about why I don’t want to twitter. Avoiding the hump of irrelevance is key to continuing to create art. I can’t imagine willingly involving myself in something that will fill up my creative time with minutae. The way you have more time in the day is LIMITING the amount of crap that enters your day (at least for me). This is definitely not flowing and beautifully written, but hopefully it also rings true. So, don’t give in. That’s what I’m sayin’.
(additionally, who thought it was possible to make people feel EVEN MORE self-important than blogging? People are made important, popular and newsworthy through twitter for how creatively they talk about their breakfast. I’d rather photograph it, and a whole lot of other peoples like jon huck–http://jonhuck.com. that, to me, says more.)
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:01 pm:
It’s true, a large part of my day is taken up by consuming information already, just with books, A/V content of various natures, and my blog feeds. Twitter, in many ways, encourages people to put more trvial stuff out there.
It might make sense for someone who is bored, but I’m never bored. The only time when I’m bored is when I’m forced to be somewhere (like a bad lecture) or read something (like an article written poorly with important information).
If I need to know where the party is, there are a million facebook events already available – and word of mouth still works remarkably well. I hear about tons of things going on while at work. Plus, there is a gallery opening every week posted on various local blogs.
In fact, the only thing that could make me use twitter is the fear that some person (who already has a blog) would say something insanely useful on their twitter and I’d miss it – a fear of somehow being outside of the loop. Then I realize that if anything was actually that important, someone would re-blog it.
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Dan comment on May 17, 2009 10:49 pm:
twitter is basically an open platform, you can use it for whatever you want – updating the world on what you had for breakfast, talking about deadlines for contests, whatever you see fit.
i think twitter is sort of like IRC… except there are no rooms/channels, you just pick a few people you want to hear, and go from there. sometimes it’s infuriating, sometimes it’s enlightening. twitter’s not going to save or destroy culture, it’s just another outlet for people as we move our lives online.
or something like that.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 10:52 pm:
I understand all that – except I already do exactly this through blog feeds without a character or embedding limit. So why move from something less restrictive to something more?
It’s an interesting experiment in imposing limits, perhaps to inspire creative thought in short form, but honestly I think there are only about 16 people out there in the world who can say much in that many letters that I’d need to read. And I can just subscribe to their RSS feeds.
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Dan reply on May 17th, 2009 10:59 pm:
i see where you’re coming from – i agree there is nothing intrinsically better about *limiting* what you can say!
theoretically, the benefit of twitter is that it puts people close together, i.e. on the same platform. commenting on the internet is actually kind of a pain, if i could write this comment right in reader and have google populate it to your blog, that would be very sweet. but right now that’s not possible.
so i think the benefit of twitter is actually holding a direct “conversation” of sorts. sorry for linking to my own blog but this was an interesting twitter exchange. i’ve met a couple of people in real life through twitter, although i’ve had better interactions through flickr, forums or just email :D
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:06 pm:
Certainly there are interesting exchanges, but as I just wrote above (before you even mentioned it, haha), anything really interesting is going to be re-blogged. It’s like now that blogs are an accepted and important medium, they need something else to feed them “crap.”
Remember when people said anything interesting on blogs would eventually end up in print media? It sounded logical then (well, maybe a tiny bit) but now it sounds insane.
The reason it sounds insane, though, is because wordpress self-publishing is less restrictive than most print mediums, at least in terms of cost, as I’ve mentioned before.
So I don’t see the same situation with twitter.
Side notes: Good point about google reader and comments. I forsee commenting functionality implemented there soon, I hope. Right now you can comment on articles when you share them, and create conversations that way, but it’s unfortunate that it doesn’t place a comment or link on the original article. That being said, I’m all for you linking your blog when relevant. More intellectuality is almost always a positive thing. In fact, I can’t think of a time in this kind of conversation when less information/context would be useful.
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Dan reply on May 17th, 2009 11:15 pm:
that’s a good point, and i don’t have any prediction of whether or not twitter will eventually become a place to host lots of content instead of a place where stuff is thrown around. (if i understand your point correctly, that’s the distinction you’re drawing between blogs and twitter?)
i consider myself far from a twitter die-hard – i set my link in this thread to my twitter account for fun – but the La Pura Vida gallery twitter is really a good one. although, to take up your point, there’s no reason that it *has* to be a twitter feed – last time i checked wordpress will still accept a post under 140 characters…
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:22 pm:
Exactly. That’s my main point. I see no problem with shortform content, none at all. I just don’t understand the reasoning behind splitting your content across seperate platforms.
I spend a huge amount of time making sure everything important is available in one place, here. Why would I put half my updates in one place and half in another? It’s just confusing.
The only reason to do it right now is that it’s trendy and many are hoping to catch some viewers off of it. Basically, they’re hoping twitter will send people to their blog, and the blog will send them to their website. It’s stupid – just post everything in one place.
If you’re upset about the commenting stuff, think that’s better on twitter, etc, work on integrating it into the other mediums. Wordpress is open source for a reason.
LPV might be good, but posts like this are infuriating:
# @roscar I guess it was. oh well.about 7 hours ago from web in reply to roscar
I’d end up spending half my day wondering who people like oscar are and browsing through threads totally unrelated to my interests, just to find out if they are related to my interests. I think at this point, it’s better to avoid altogether.
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Alisha reply on May 17th, 2009 11:36 pm:
yes, avoid all together. splitting across platforms sucks. i must say, the only reason i blog is for photographic responsibility. Most of my friends who are also professional photographers don’t even blog. AT ALL. Let the work speak for itself in galleries, etc. ANY time doing minutae online is time away from creating…. slightly preachy, but it is something I try to ascribe to for the most part… its the voice in the back of my head, saying, this crap doesn’t matter. go photograph, go brainstorm, go sketch, or read something that is actually good enough to be IN PRINT.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:46 pm:
It’s a little unfair to infer that all good written content is in print, but I understand where you’re coming from.
Basically, I enjoy blogging because I enjoy writing. I write things for print as well. If I just wanted to photograph, I wouldn’t put nearly as much energy into this, I think.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 10:55 pm:
Also, to push your analogy: It’s like being in an IRC chatroom (which I haven’t had the time for in about 4 years now) with people who are in a chatroom with other people I can’t see.
Now, while perhaps those other people are feeding the people I’m watching useful information, but more likely that’s a recipe for the most annoying new media experience ever.
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Dan reply on May 17th, 2009 11:02 pm:
i am happy to continue with that analogy because i think it holds up, at least for what i think makes twitter interesting.
yes, definitely, twitter is very poorly organized right now. i think we’d probably see more productive interactions if everyone was flocking to IRC instead of twitter… but that will never happen. in the meantime, i am really waiting for an app built on top of twitter that will make it easier to sort through all the junk that’s there.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:08 pm:
I suppose that, if what you’re talking about happens, it would make it some kind of worldwide chatroom with flow functionality, redesigning itself based upon interest of the viewer. It would need some kind of input, I think, since AI isn’t good enough to grab based on perceived interest from just a few text examples. I dunno. Not my area of expertise.
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Alisha comment on May 17, 2009 11:10 pm:
Don’t you think a little though, that if you need to create something to sort through the junk that the program itself is flawed? I say go back to square one.
also, to reply to your reply on my comment, ian i agree, never bored. but somehow, with all the media, information, and crap at our disposal, we find a way to be bored without more emails in the box, more updates on facebook, etc. from that came the birth of twitter. people are TOO plugged in, that they don’t know what to do without having SOMETHING to do, a tweet to read, a blog post to create, etc. a friend just posted an article about narcissism and the link to facebook, though not terribly well written, i think it has some points that can be useful in this discussion:
http://steckstreet.blogspot.com/2009/05/generation-i.html
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:14 pm:
Honestly, I think some people will just be bored no matter what. They are boring people and can’t see everything there is to do.
I’m much more likely to be ever-awed, and if in a bad mood, overwhelmed.
I don’t pay attention to much on facebook beside event invites, either. Oh, and I go there when I need to find a phone number or other relevant information.
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Dan reply on May 17th, 2009 11:23 pm:
hi alisha. i guess i would think of twitter less as a program in and of itself and more as an open standard, like RSS. (until last week) twitter has been almost *lazy* in updating the functionality of the service. they are putting their effort into making the back end technically sound, so in the meantime they’ve thrown the doors open for people to build apps on top of it. RSS never had an “official home page” to read feeds, but now that RSS readers (OK, google reader) exist the standard is a lot more useful. twitter is still early, it is a mess right now but i think it will only take one app to make it “click,” so to speak.
as for being bored… i’m off to take a bike ride now :D :D :D thank you for the discussion. but maybe i should twitter about it before i step out the door?
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:25 pm:
hahah go ahead. I think that blogs still were functional before feed readers, since they were often well designed content pages that were reasonably self contained, though interlinked. Twitter you sort of have to follow a few people in order to understand at all.
PS. Are these nested comments getting hard to read? I’m thinking about making it so it alternates background colors or border sizes or something, but I’m not sure what’s the best direction to go in.
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Alisha reply on May 17th, 2009 11:29 pm:
hi dan. i was using program in the general sense, programmers created it, etc. i get what you mean about open standard, but then i might as well say, then the open standard should be fixed against junk from the beginning.
I guess you could say I’m inherently biased from the start… recently attended a photo conference, and quite a few of the people i met wanted to link up on twitter, flickr, etc. they were all so attached to how cool they were for using those… when it didn’t seem like they were really getting much done in the REAL world.
the more you are linked too, the more tied you are, I find.
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Alisha reply on May 17th, 2009 11:30 pm:
oh, and nested comments, sometimes it is just hard to know what you read last, but i do like that they group. different backgrounds would not be good, i think… so i guess i’m saying, i have no worthwhile advice on the matter.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:47 pm:
We actually reached the nested comment limit above and I had to increase it to 10 from 6. I think any more than that and there wouldn’t be much room for the words.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 17th, 2009 11:31 pm:
hah, good point. Though I do think that the content I create for and comment on the blog is worthwhile, at the very least it’s good training for freelance writing, and I hope to spark good conversation like this – so it feels more worthwhile than updating my facebook status obsessively.
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Elizabeth Heppenstall’s Twitter Update | Ian Aleksander Adams Pingback on May 17, 2009 11:40 pm:
[...] last post generated a fair amount of interesting conversation. As Dan remarked, it would be nice if you could comment directly on a google reader post and have [...]
Alisha comment on May 18, 2009 12:22 am:
I do agree, unfair to say everything in print is good writing, because certainly there are lots of crappy articles, books etc, out there… however, i think the balance must be in favor of good writing when it comes to generally accepted print media. (not talking fringe publications here). Because print has larger costs, the publishers are invested in the content being something that people will continue to read (at least that is my logic and assumption about the industry.)
Good writers are recognizable anywhere, I think. Why do you think subscribe to your feed?
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 18th, 2009 2:37 am:
yeah, it certainly seems logical, but then you only have to look at all the banal crap lining the magazine racks and bookshelves to know it isn’t true.
People will print whatever will sell, and selling doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent.
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Dan comment on May 18, 2009 8:33 am:
i write a blog to practice writing, to see what i actually think about things, if that makes sense.
i don’t think commenting is better on twitter really. i don’t think twitter is particularly *good* at anything, really, except convincing people to use the service. laugh at your peril, though! facebook has kept and held users because of that. do you check your friendster/myspace/orkut account to see what events are going on? as it stands, i hardly use facebook, if someone invites me on facebook but not email i’ll never know. that’s just to show that people use things for different purposes.
i appreciate alisha’s point about tying yourself to services, there is nothing intrinsically impressive about updating 5 online profiles or whatever. it just means that you spend a lot of time in front of the computer. (of course this describes more and more people…)
i think it’s harsh to take someone to task for asking to connect on flickr. i’ve been meeting photo people lately and it’s commonplace to ask to see each other’s websites, just so we can see what kind of pictures the other takes. i don’t carry prints with me, but if i give you a link to my flickr page, or my blog, you can see my stuff. that strikes me as pretty useful to say the least, of course i can imagine that some people might go overboard with their willingness to demonstrate knowledge of web apps…
ian: i would suggest having comments nest only a couple levels deep, or maybe even not nest at all. at the time of writing this comment there are like 3 separate threads going on, but i prefer to organize my thoughts. again just a suggestion.
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Ian Aleksander Adams reply on May 18th, 2009 5:25 pm:
Flickr serves a purpose at least, in terms of updating mass archives.
I’m digging the nested comments right now, but maybe I can cut back on the threading. I dunno. I’ll live with it a bit and see if I can improve it any.
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Where you allow your attention to go… « Intersecting Images Pingback on May 20, 2009 10:27 am:
[...] of distration, by Sam Anderson in NYT Mag – quote attributed to Merlin Mann….. Seems perhaps related to this blog post which in turn refers to a post by Meg Pickardon a little fun nugget describing the [...]