Twitter meta: It does too have a point
Blake Robinson of TechCrunch compares Twitter, Dodgeball and Facebook status. His take:
I think though that Twitter has a limited appeal. Sure it’s cool at an event like SXSW, but I can’t see it maintaining much functionality out of a convention/festival environment.
Trust me, it does.
There’s the obvious point: it’s fun. As Jason put it All I can say is that the idea of getting little updates from folks throughout the day about the ephemera of their days is kind of delightful.
Robinson praises the utility of Dodgeball, and its location-centric feature set. To me, that’s where Dodgeball comes up short. It’s too place-dependent and location-centric. It has little utility outside of alerting people to where you are.
Twitter, however, is location-optional. It’s an easy way to check-in with friends during the day, regardless of place. You can put out a call or request for feedback on a blog post, or help finding some information.
What’s more, because its available via SMS and the web, you can choose just how intrusive you want updates to be. And you can still broadcast tweets from your phone without receiving updates. Dodgeball isn’t nearly that flexible.
I can’t compare Twitter to Facebook status, except to say that Twitter has a different kind of community. Facebook is still a very college-centric space, while Twitter (at least based on my small Twitter-verse) has attracted an older (late 20s+ with jobs) crowd.
How do you think they compare? Have you used any or all of these services? Which do you think will survive?
I don’t have a Dodgeball account, but I have heard/read a lot about it. It seems to have a lot of really cool features. I believe the fact that it is so geocentric is what makes it a little bit more attractive than twitter. I also think the crush feature is pretty clever, even though I can’t imagine any of my friends using it (more of a teenybopper feature. Well that’s not completely true, my wife would stalk the hell out of Morris Chestnut if he had a Dodgeball account :)) I have however fooled around with Twitter. It’s cool, but it kinda grew old pretty quickly. I question the longevity of micro blogging. I think eventually people will stop posting, and the audience will stop caring. Micro Blogging, like Facebook and Myspace have one very important factor working in their favor, the fact that people are nosey as hell. But because micro blogs have no substance, and could be easily taken out by the big dawgs, in my opinion, they will soon be a passing fad.
Dodgeball is a one-trick pony. It’s a very cool trick, yes, but it’s functionality is to tell people where you are and provide information about that venue. Its purpose is slightly different. Its worth to you is predicated on how many local friends you have, how close you are to those friends, and how SMS savvy they are.
Twitter is whatever you make of it. I hate to conceive of it as microblogging. Not only is a cheesy buzzword, but I also don’t think it’s entirely reflective of how people use Twitter.
It’s more like time-shifted (as opposed to instant) messaging or chat mixed with the ability to spy on random folks. It’s a platform that isn’t bound to or by an IM client. I wish I could come up with the perfect metaphor. But I really believe that its flexibility will be an asset once folks figure out how else they can use it.
It’s still “passing notes in class”.
Last night was a perfect example. A person in class in SF needing distraction. Friends in LA and Minneapolis send Chris Rock and Boob jokes to pass the time.
That’s the brilliance of twitter.
It’s also a great archival tool. If I want to know what was going on at any point over the last month (I started using twitter President’s Day Weekend), I can run through my archives and see what my friends and I were up to.
It’s a help tool. It’s a great way to ask questions.
It’s next level communication. It moves my online friends into my offline world. We make more “real” connections this way because we are “present” in each other’s lives via twitter.
It also allows me to stay more closely connected to my offline/local friends who are also using the service. I feel bad for those that aren’t because they are missing out on the continuous dialogue.
It’s become the back channel for our every day lives. A kind of comic thought bubble.
But that’s just how I use it. People use it in so many different ways.
I’m such a twitter evangelist.
I just realized that I haven’t posted on my own blog in almost a week. Most of the thoughts I’ve had have gone out on Twitter. None of them were big enough to warrant their own blog post and probably would have ended up in a bulleted list or something. Which reinforces the “microblogging” concept. But Twittering satisfies the need I have to just say something and get it out of my head so I can move on, and provides more instant feedback (potentially) than blogging and comments would.
Dodgeball could be slightly more useful if the FOAF feature actually worked. But your point about it being dependent on having local friends, where Twitter does not, is a great one.
So yeah, Twitter is a lot like not-quite-instant messaging. I think that’s what I enjoy most about it.
A rather sizeable clique of people here in Minneapolis have been essentially using Dodgeball to Twitter and it annoys the shit out of people who are trying to use Dodgeball for the “intended” Dodgeball purpose. They argue that if Dodgeball actually allows you to send messages in whatever format you want, why shouldn’t you? To which I say that’s true, but y’all all might as well just sign up for Twitter instead and that way it’s easier for the rest of your friends outside of your clique to manage how they receive your messages. But now they’re just being stubborn, so for the moment I’ve blocked all their Dodgeball messages. And they’ve killed the joy for Twin Cities folks who might have been interested in it. We’re not big enough to drown out that noise.
For me, if I’m going to check in on Dodgeball, I’ll probably Twitter it, too. The only difference right now is that I have different (though somewhat overlapping) groups of friends on each, and it was a bit of a chore getting some of my less-internet-inclined friends to get dodgeball accounts. Even though I think they’d enjoy Twitter more, they don’t want to sign up for another thing.
I think there’s the plenty of potential for other services to incorporate Twitter as a feature (much like the facebook status thing, which I’ve heard about but haven’t witnessed since I don’t facebook). Don’t know if the Twitter folks want to go that route.
dang jason, thought about twitter much? you’ve summed it up perfectly though. it’s a cool lightweight communication / amusement service.
Interesting conversation with a coworker: He and his wife are using a private Twitter account so that he can keep up with his new son’s doings during the day.