Traction Software, Inc. | Blog1014: Explaining Twitter – One of Three Places for People

pbokelly — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:20:06 +0000

An excellent social networking snapshot from Traction Software co-founder Greg Lloyd – read the full post for more insights, if you’re pondering social software dynamics

For me, the most interesting use of Twitter is as host of the world’s largest stream of personal broadcast channels: you can find, follow or reply to people adept at the 160 character tweet. For example, I enjoy David Pogue (pogue) and Steven Fry (stephenfry) for their ability to mix notes, quips and links. I also follow a sampling of folk interested in hypertext, social software and technology – at least those who don’t just repeat what I scan in more detail from their RSS feeds. I’ll occasionally reply or rebroadcast a tweet ("retweet"), but I also don’t feel bad about un-following folk whose posts I’d rather read in RSS, or tune out as the only way to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of what I read under control. If you attempt to follow a very large number of people, you’ll end up reading a random sample or facing a signal to noise problem:

Venkatesh Rao (vgr): 9:44AM Mar 21: Twitter needs a ‘more like this’/'less like this’ reinforcement learning to lower my SNR . Fave tweet types, not people.

My reply (roundtrip) about 12 hours later: @vgr agree. There’s a great difference between following friends & family where everything counts & topics you care about x everyone.

I’ll call this use of Twitter the world’s largest floating cocktail party, coffee break, and trade show happy hour, where you’re free to tune in to what anyone is saying to the world – and talk back if you wish. Just like any party the roof is an introduction, but you can also just step back and enjoy the flow. It’s a fragmented, freewheeling and noisy place – but you choose the channels you want to listen to follow and can change channels any time.

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Traction Software, Inc. | Blog1014: Explaining Twitter – One of Three Places for People