Well, I’ve dived into the world of Twitter. My original intent was just to create another option to alert people to my infrequent updates, but I ended up using the site frequently. You can find me here. My main account will include stuff about both my main online interests (film and urban planning) as well as my various other obsessions.
As to my impressions of Twitter itself after a couple of weeks of using it – well, its a strange beast. Obviously, given I’ve taken it up with some regularity, I understand the appeal. Basically, it’s not so much a social networking site as a kind of rest-stop for tired bloggers (this is why the description of it as a micro-blogging site is much more accurate than lumping it in with things like Facebook or MySpace as a social networking site). Certainly the 140 character limit on posts seems liberating compared to the drudgery of maintaining a webpage or blog. When audiences expect sites to update with new content at least daily, that’s a huge demand on the author; 140 characters allows for the faster turnover without the chore factor. Twitter is basically reducing our expectations of on-line content so that they better align with expectations about how fast sites should update.