11/07/2008

Wither Twitter


I learned about Twitter after it was already popular, and as such, I was skeptical. The idea of constant updates with limited characters seemed a little MySpace to me, or even worse, a bit AIM away-message. I remembered the rainbow font colors, obscenely mundane emoticons, and the horrible, horrible quotes. It still gives me shivers.

But it seems, everyone is doing, and not just every twelve year-old and his/her friends, but even blogs that I enjoy and respect have Twitter streams now. The possibilities seem interesting: a combination of blog, SMS, and RSS feeds, all three of which I enjoy. But will they taste great together?

When I found out that a javascript exists to let me Tweet (still, very uncomfortable with that verb) things directly from Google Reader, I decided to take the plunge. I really like sharing things quickly via my Reader share page, but Reader doesn't seem to have a wide enough following to make it work well. The only people I have ever seen advertise their shared lists are Reader techs. But lots of people seem to like Twitter.

However, this begs an even more important question: do I have enough friends to share my life with to make any of these things work? The only person I really hang out with, email, or SMS is Megan, and she's not a Twitterer. I don't think I know anybody who uses it. So who is going to read my tweets? I've come to terms with the fact that this blog may well be just a journal, and a spot for Google Image Search to land on. But something much more intimate in terms of "buddy lists" unfortunately has the effect of being a depressing mirror to my social life.

Regardless, I figure it will be a learning experience. So now, if you like, there is a link to the left that lets you see the Interdome (i.e. my own) Twitter feed. If you are into that sort of thing, check it out. I promise that it won't consist of sad little musings like this post: most likely it will be cool art, music, and news links that I find that are sharable but do not require a full blog discussion. Call it the Interdome mini-feed, at 140 characters a post.

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