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On Being Detained in Cairo
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Posted at Apr. 29, 2008 02:21 PM CST | | | I've brought up Twitter before. Twitter is a micro-blogging service. You use it to "tweet" messages of no more than 140 characters. Your friends, colleagues and the general public can follow your Twitter stream and keep up with such urgent intelligence as, "Feeling bored," or "Currently surrounded by idiots." Or, perhaps, "Arrested." | | | "Arrested" was the tweet sent by US citizen James Karl Buck from an Egyptian police car (using his cell phone). He had been covering an anti-government protest. The message was received by the numerous followers of his Twitter stream both inside and outside Egypt. It triggered a sequence of events that ultimately persuaded the Egyptian security services to part company with him. | | | So What? | | | James Karl Buck's experience suggests that Twitter would be good for field workers and their support staff back home. One important facet of Twitter is that anyone can pick up your stream, and if it's interesting, you may get an awful lot of people listening in: People who can answer questions and provide timely aid. (Twitter is apparently also used by journalists to float ideas with their fans--free market research, in effect.) | | | I've wondered about Twitter's future. One intriguing thought is auto-posting. Can your cell phone use its knowledge of your context to create tweets automatically? Maybe. With GPS you could do, "Leaving work," and "Stuck in traffic on I-94," and "Hanging out at L'Abbatoir Impromptu" ("Shouting into the phone" would work, too.) Such "auto-tweets" would make it possible to produce reams of tedious information without the bother of actually keying it in. Or, from another perspective, it's exactly the sort of history that field personnel in potentially risky situations would want to make available. | | | I actually have a Twitter account (because I'm curious about others' streams) but I don't tweet. What would I say? The minutiae of my day are boring even to me. And my thoughts aren't organized enough to fit into140 characters, plus I prefer to express them (such as they are) here first. But I like the idea of Twitter...I just think it's for people who, like Mr. Buck, lead lives substantially more interesting than my own. | | | | Comment on this post |
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Comments Posted by:
Chinmay Kulkarni
on
May 22, 2008 11:24 PM CST  | hi all,
i had visited twitter and created account, but never used it. i used to think, how can a status message (much simillar to captions in messangers) replace blogs? but above example clearly proves me wrong.
twitter may not be a good option for desktop Internet users but it sure is a boon for mobile users.
Auto-posting really seems a good idea. But using GPS would only allow you to tweet your location, which will have to be continuously updated after fixed intervals. Adding personalization (eg. Leaving, Stuck in traffic, Hanging out ) would be a real challenge.
By "Shouting into the phone", do you want to imply to auto-post mood swings as well? Well, that would really involve LOT of processing (on voice [calls] as well as text), and might make software heavy/bulky. It may even raise issues related to privacy.
But overall, it really seems a good idea. Cheers to innovation! :D |
Posted by:
Alejandro Cordón
on
May 21, 2008 07:33 AM CST | Hi all,
I use Twitter myself and, although I was quite reluctant to use as I saw no use on it, I hace to admit I am now quite convince of the contrary.
I think ot Twitter as a great tool to become more "present" for those you ought to be more with (parents, girlfriend, friends), but time constraints are for real.
From the opposite perspective, it also lets me know of people I care and I like to know what are they up to or how are they doing.
Anyway, this is one of the multiple possible uses ot Twitter. There are many others such as a tool to let communicate with your peers or managees and let them know where are you, how is the project going or when is the next meeting.
Twitter uses are revealing themselves as time goes by.
If you are curious: www.twitter.com/acordon
Regards, |
Posted by:
January
on
May 15, 2008 09:10 AM CST | thinking about the postings and "emergency status reports". Anyone who follows you has the option to have your tweets sent to their cell phone as a text message. I often wondered how Twitter could actually be made useful. Could this be it? |
Posted by:
daniel b
on
May 13, 2008 11:27 AM CST | Hi, Ed, how are you?
One thought on auto-posting: It kind of implies that the recipient needs to receive the data more than the sender needs to send it. If that's the case, why not set up a full 'pull' system. eg, in your field worker scenario, the support staff back home would be granted access to pull info direct from a gps.
For me the most interesting thing about twitter is that it can do for 'text messaging' what blogging did for email.
Email was (largely) 1-to-1.
Text messaging is (again, largely) 1-to-1.
Twitter allows what is essentially a text message to reach thousands &, when sufficiently interesting to the audience, become amplified & spread.
The second most interesting thing, which never ceases to amaze me, is how such simple "anyone could have thought of that!" applications can grow so big so fast.
daniel |
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