On Being a Twit.

I've been on Twitter for a while now -- my first Tweet was on April 1st, 2007. I didn't really get into it much at first, for two reasons: 1) I didn't see any real reason to sink large amounts of time into it, particularly since I was already blogging my random thoughts on MySpace (ugh) at the time; and 2) I know that I have a very bad tendency to sink large amounts of time into things once I get into them, even when there's no good reason for me to do so, and I did not want to fall into that trap at the time (same reason I have not, nor will I ever, get involved with World of Warcraft and the like). So my Tweets were few and far between. The fact that my job's web filters started blasting Twitter three days after my first Tweet helped, too (although now Twitter is unblocked, go figure).

Well, now I'm starting to fall into that trap. Lately the things I would like to do with my (admittedly limited) online presence have grown well beyond the limitations of MySpace and Facebook and probably even this blog, and as I'm able to sneak away more time in front of the computer (not an easy task with a toddler), it will continue to evolve. So I decided that being more involved with Twitter would be a step in that direction. Plus, it's kinda fun.

Part of my reluctance to get sucked into the vorTwex (see what I did there? It's like vortex, but unnaturally mated with Twitter) was my inability to find interesting people to follow. My followers seemed completely random until I realized that they were probably just executing a search on certain terms and following anyone whose profile included any of those terms. I didn't want to cast that broad of a net. I also didn't want to put in the time or effort towards doing it the right way (see point 1 above).

Now that I am Tweeting more of my silly little life away, I have run across a number of web applications that have made Twitter a little more useful to me. In the open spirit of the Internet, I shall share them:

Twibes allows you to hand-pick the 10 Twitterers (Tweeters?) you are following who you think deserve to have more followers. Mmm, word-of-mouth advertising.

Twittelicious is a similar service, encouraging you to submit individual Tweets or Twitter sites that you find interesting (or amusing or whatever). They're even separated into sub-groups like "Weird" and "Famous People." There should be a "Creative Profanity" section.

WeFollow is a user-generated Twitter directory. Twitterers (look, I just prefer "Twits" so I'll use that from here on in) list themselves under different categories so that other Twits can find them easily. Most popular ones bubble up to the top of the listings.

TweetScan searches Twitter and other microblogging sites for given search terms and spits out a list of all the recent Tweets (or whatever other sites call their posts) that match the terms. Great for following hundreds of conversations about waffles, for instance.

Twubble digs through your existing friends and gives you a list of other Twits you may want to follow, based on what it discovered whilst interrogating your associates.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on my mood), these services are helping me rediscover Twitter and keep it from being the next stale account that I never log into anymore (I'm looking at you, Friendster). I'm certain there are more which I haven't discovered, but there you go. Of course, now the problem I find myself running headlong into is that I have to sink more time into Twitter just to keep up with all my newfound friends. You'll recall, unless you're a turnip, that this is the reason I kind of stayed away from Twitter in the first place, treating it more as a curiosity than a vital social tool.

I've decided that I need to be more selective with my circle of chosen Twits. Now that I'm following a few companies, online magazines, news aggregates and such, it occurs to me that it makes no sense to do so. I see no advantage to following these entities' Tweets that can't be gained with a plain ol' RSS feed reader. There is, however, one major disadvantage: the sheer volume of these Tweets makes it so that I have to scroll through multiple pages of material just to catch up on the Tweets of regular individuals. So, new rule: no following company Twits who have functional RSS feeds. Eliminate redundancy.

True, there are Twitter clients I can install that will help me keep corporate(ish) Tweets separate from Joe Blow Tweets, but I find the notion of installing a local application to keep up with a web-based application... unappealing. Maybe I'll try it out, but I promise nothing.

There is one thing that can save me from my impending addiction to Twitter, and that is my other annoying tendency to quickly get bored with things and walk away from them when the effort required to maintain an addiction reaches an even remotely uncomfortable level, or (more often) when a new shiny object slides into my view. I have a feeling the next shiny object will be finally learning Drupal, or Django, or Joomla. Who names these things?

Okay, you can stay on my lawn, just stop humping the garden Gnomes.

This is a follow-up of sorts on my last post, and an attempt to not just look like a crusty old man yelling at the neighborhood hooligans.

As much as I object to MySpace and Facebook, I do like the kernel of the idea of what they set out to accomplish. That said, if one absolutely must have their social networking fix, I think Virb is really a better option. I've had a Virb account for several months, haven't done much of anything with it because I'm lazy and boring, but I like the site. It's not as widely used or as popular as MyFace, and it doesn't offer much that Spacebook doesn't already have available, except for the absence of everything that makes MySpace and Facebook so very, very annoying. And that's enough for me. Virb is kind of minimalist and for the most part it doesn't get in your face. I like that.

Also, I feel compelled to share that I absolutely love social bookmarking. If you haven't already experienced the joys of sites like del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, then you should, like right now.

(Except not ma.gnolia, because their servers are down at the moment and they've experienced data corruption/loss. Which really truly sucks because I prefer ma.gnolia to del.icio.us and I feel lost without access to all my ma.gnolia bookmarks.)

These sites rock because sometimes (often) I'm at a computer which I do not own and happen upon a cool, informative, or otherwise interesting site that I want to bookmark for later reference. Well, Foxmarks is great but I don't (for example) have Firefox at work. So, I turn to my trusty Ma.gnolia bookmarklet and all is well... when the service isn't hosed, at least. :( Social bookmarking not only lets you keep a repository of all your favorite sites on the web, but it is a phenomenal resource for finding information on whatever topic tickles your fanny. In some ways it's superior to using search engines, because search engines just give you whatever matches their algorithms decide are relevant, while with social bookmarking you can see what other people who share your interests have decided are actually relevant. It's like asking your buddies what movies they like instead of reading the stuffy newspaper reviews. Or something.

But you probably already knew all that. And if not, now you do. So, there. I've promoted something social. I'm not a curmudgeon.

My Struggle with Social Networking

I'm trying to like Facebook. I really am. I've had this Facebook account for a while, and I recently started trying to do something worthwhile with it, since so many of my MySpace friends are abandoning MySpace for the 'book.

For that matter, I've been trying to figure out a reason to like MySpace for a good while, too. At first it was great, I could keep up with all my friends, catch up with old pals from school or former jobs or wherever, and hey, I can write blogs too! Neat! There were all kinds of bands to discover, and I could customize my little "space" to look however I wanted.

However, despite having all the right pieces, MySpace utterly failed to do anything really useful with them (at least in my eyes). They were all there, they just never seemed to click and form anything cohesive. To make it worse, the MySpace community completely trashed the place with millions of tacky glittery-sparkly images and audio and video that plays automatically when you visit a page and countless nonsense survey bulletin spam and phishing attacks and "why am I not in your Top 8/12/20/n" drama... if you've spent any amount of time on MySpace then I don't even need to go on, you got the point before I made it.

And customization loses its luster when your only options are to use a template someone else designed (kind of the antithesis of "customizing"), or to try to wrap your brain around, and work within the confines of, an unbelievably lousy and poorly-thought-out table-based layout that forms the foundation of the site you're trying to make your own. That's not to say it can't be done, because I've seen some very unique and clever layouts. I'm just saying I don't think the amount of effort I'd have to put into it is worth the payout. I guess I'm a lousy web designer. I'd rather build my own structure from the ground up than have to wade through somebody else's terrible code and hammer away at it until it does what I want. Guess that's why I don't have a sweet code-monkey position with some big corporation.

But back to Facepalm... I mean Facebook. I can understand why everybody's ditching the 'space... but is Facebook actually a more attractive option? I don't see it. As I told one of my fellow new 'bookers (yeah I'm going wild with the apostrophes, shut up), it's just a glorified Rolodex. None of MySpace's customization options (not that I used them), no blogging capability, and even with nearly all of my e-mail notifications turned off, every week my inbox is still littered with all-important alerts that somebody I know has indeed passed gas or stepped on a kitten or inserted something into something else. Stop it. Hey, someone "wrote" on my "wall." You know what that's called? Graffiti. Except graffiti is art and this is not. And in some cases, this should be illegal, which graffiti is, but should not be.

What does Facebook have? Poking. Wow, somebody can poke me. I assume they mean this in the non-sexual sense, where somebody walks up and jabs you in the arm with their finger. When that happens in real life, I get annoyed. Was that not supposed to happen here? If so, something has gone awry. What else you got? Apps. Which serve no purpose other than to spur MySpace, who finds itself on the less-desirable side of the "cool" fence, into vainly shouting "hey, hey, we got Apps now too! See? Check out all these bitchin' Apps! Where are you going? Come back here!"

Admittedly, when I first read that Facebook was opening up its API to third-party developers, I thought it was a cool idea with a lot of potential. Then I read about the privacy and security concerns related to the way in which Apps work and how much data is made accessible to the App developers regarding their users (Yes, privacy and security concerns exist everywhere on the interwebs, but why voluntarily submit myself to them?). At that point my opinion turned from "Oh, that's kinda cool" to "Screw that." Apps have quickly devolved into the logical extension of chain mail and a very handy tool for spammers. I'm supposed to give some random coder access to my personal information, in exchange for the ability to grow virtual pot under my friends' virtual grow lamps? No thank you.

I'm just not a very social person, so I'm sure that explains my nigh-disdainful apathy towards "social networking." I'll keep trying to find something to validate my Facebook presence, though. If I'm missing something, please let me know. In the meanwhile, I will continue to simultaneously exist on the 'space and on the 'book, because I can't completely abandon either of them, since I have friends and acquaintances on each of them that only exist on that one and not the other. And you know, I might want to contact them now and then. Because I lost their phone number. Or never had it.