[Phpwm] Look mum.. new list signature + twitter account...

[Jon Spriggs]

Twitter is the non-free version of identi.ca? ;)

It's like an aggregated web based SMS-like engine, with it's origins
in SMS - hence the length of the messages - 140 characters (because
the other 20 are supposed to be for the username.)

While it is an inherently geeky service (after all, who else comes up
with connecting a phone to a PC and broadcasting the results?) it's
gained a lot of traction in the celebrity world as it *tends* to
bypass the agents and the various other flappers that get in the way
of our fame obsessed stars, giving the masses a direct vision of what
that celebrity (allegedly) thinks. That said, the attraction is all in
the number of people you interact with, although many people do just
use it to broadcast their thoughts or what they're having for lunch.
The biggest hurdle when most people are starting out in any of these
short-message based services, is followers... your experience is
limited because you don't know so many people on there.

Twitter got around this by automatically subscribing all new users to
a list of "recommended reads". The AGPL licensed (and PHP-written)
StatusNet, which powers identi.ca, has a list of featured posts and
users.

Like all communication media, it has it's conventions - @personname
directs a message to them (only at the beginning of a message on
Twitter, anywhere in the message on StatusNet) - putting #topic shows
your message is about that topic and saying RT @personname at the
beginning of a message or via @personname at the end shows that you're
rebroadcasting that message to the people who "follow" or read your
messages.

I did a talk for Manchester Free Software a few months back about the
differences between the various short message services that are
currently around - the talk was recorded by Tim Dobson and is on
Archive.org, while the slides themselves are on slideshare.net
although I don't have either URL to hand at the moment.

If you want to "follow" me, I'm JonTheNiceGuy, both on twitter
(http://twitter.com/JonTheNiceGuy) and identi.ca
(http://identi.ca/jontheniceguy)
-- 
Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs LPIC-1 Certified

2009/10/1 David Goodwin <david at codepoets.co.uk>:
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> Peter Crouch wrote:
>> Hello to you all,
>>
>> Please excuse my ignorance but what is a Twitter account? You hear a lot
>> about these things nowadays but I have only recently been persuaded to
>> have a Facebook profile and I don't do anything with it!
>>
>> Looking forward to enlightenment,
>
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> I look at twitter as a way of subscribing to various people I find
> interesting (e.g the wife, guardian newspaper, national trust, local
> people etc).
>
> Each message posted on twitter is at most 140 characters, so they're
> quick to read, and (generally) not full of marketing drivel.
>
> As a twitter user, you decide which people you wish to follow - you then
> see a 'stream' populated by the posts they make.
>
> The only disadvantage is that you can't say "I'll follow PeterCrouch's
> tweets on foobarSubject only and ignore his gardening tips".
>
> So, in this instance, you could 'follow' the PHPWM user on twitter. When
> I then post anything as that user, you'd see these postings in your stream.
>
>
> Twitter is sort of similar to using RSS feeds, however it's all in one
> place and the post size is limited.
>
>
> Twitter therefore is great for announcing e.g. an article on something -
> but obviously not for posting the article itself (due to the 140
> character limit!).
>
>
> Does that help? Perhaps others can come up with a better description.
>
> David.
>
> - --
> David Goodwin
>
> [ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
> [ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]
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