Future Tense: What's the appeal of Twitter?

Yesterday's post about Twitter led me to do a Future Tense segment on the topic (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes).

As part of my research I signed up for a Twitter account. You can follow my messages here. Note sure how long I will keep it up.

Here is a transcript of the Future Tense segment (Don't get used to transcripts, very time-consuming. I'm a one-dude show, must prioritize).

---

In the last month or so, a strange new communication tool has burst onto the scene. Twitter is a service in which you post very short messages -- via cell phone texting, chat program, or the Web -- about what you're doing right now, or rather, what you were doing right before you wrote your message.

For example, if I were to create a Twitter message right now, it might go something like "Telling public radio listeners about a popular new service called Twitter." Messages are limited to 140 characters -- just a couple of sentences really.

You can get messages from your Twitter friends on your phone or computer.

The very concept is quite silly to many people. After all, is the minutiae of daily life worth communicating? I really wanted to know, so I called up a couple of Twitter users. Aaron Landry is an IT manager from Minneapolis. He says reading Twitter messages gives him a unique perspective on the lives of the people he follows.

LANDRY: "It's kind of like a raw, inside look at a particular person's life. You know? It's not necessarily well crafted, it's not necessarily something that's beautiful or anything like that. It's very simple and it's very raw and it's immediate and it's fast. It's real-time."

Landry, a photographer and pilot, posted these Twitter messages yesterday:

"Not figuring out where this little blurry dot is coming from on my new
camera."

"Cancelled yet another flight to Duluth."

"Just got interviewed by Jon Gordon of Future Tense about Twitter."

LANDRY: "A lot of people when they start out, they're like, "I'm using Twitter, I'm signing up for Twitter" is what their first couple of posts are. And then some people will continue to post stuff about, you know, "I'm feeding my cat" or "I'm driving to work." And a lot of other people end up realizing, maybe I should only publish the stuff that somebody might actually be interested in. And those are the kinds of people I love subscribing to, because they realize "I have an audience here, so I'm just going to publish stuff people might have a bit of interest in." I tend to not watch the people who end up talking about their commute every morning."

Another Twitter fan is blogger Rex Sorgatz of Seattle. He says Twitter is a good complement to blogs.

SORGATZ: "I have a lot of friends who have blogs and what the blog allows me to do is sort of keep up on what their daily thoughts are, what they've been thinking effectively. And what Twitter allows me to do is keep up on what they've been doing. And the combination of the two equals a pretty good sum of what that person is like so the next time I see them in real time I can kind of know what's going on in their life. So there's that. Me in particular, I use it as this little vehicle to kind of remind myself what exactly I am doing when I use Twitter. It causes me to actually pause and think for a second, "Hey, what am I actually doing right now?"

GORDON: I'm sure that's an unintended consequence or feature of Twitter.

SORGATZ: Yeah, I'm not sure it was supposed to create existential anxiety
(laughter). Everyone else seems to think (Twitter) creates nothing but
social chaos and yet another thing to do in their life. But at the
same time there's undeniably something addicting about it.

GORDON: How many messages would you say you send out every day?

SORGATZ: I probably send four or five, on average, a day. And I have about 100
friends who I follow and probably put together I get probably 150
messages a day? Something like that.

GORDON: Wow, I wonder if I should sign up. Do you think
there would beanyone interested in really following what Jon Gordon of
Future Tense is doing on a sort of hour by hour or daily basis?

SORGATZ: I think so. I mean, it's a semi-promotional vehicle in a world in
which everything seems to be semi-promotional.

GORDON: Would you be my Twitter friend?

SORGATZ: I would most certainly be your friend, Jon Gordon (laughter). Absolutely."

Postscript: I intend to try Twitter for awhile, and plan to post messages about my
workday. If you're bored enough to check it out, you can find my Tweets at twitter.com/jongordon.

This is Future Tense, I'm Jon Gordon.

A modest proposal herewith proffered. Instead of Twitter, how 'bout Fritter? --like with Twitter folks could post what they are doing at the time, but in this case what they are doing instead of what they should be doing --seems more potentially interesting to me, and since procrastination is endemic, likely to others too --it'd be somehow validating to learn just how many of us are in that same (off course) boat.