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twitter.com/agahran
Want to follow the Knight New Media Center seminar this week? Check my Twitter feed. |
OK, I finally succumbed. I'm trying out
Twitter. I'm both curious and skeptical about this service, which focuses on people saying what they're doing at any given time in 140 characters or less.
When I was at the BlogHer Business Summit in New York last month, almost every discussion was abuzz about Twitter. The main question was, "What's the point?" People seemed to love it or hate it; there was little middle ground. I was one of the few Twitter virgins at the time.
From a cursory exploration, I suspect this kind of service may hold some promise for live blogging -- especially for augmenting coverage for live events. Of course, 140 characters per post is very limiting. However, if the general approach works for event coverage, I'm sure some clever coder will hack together a spinoff tool that will be more versatile.
Today I'm heading to Los Angeles, for a Knight New Media Center seminar: Election '08: Covering Politics in Cyberspace. There, on Thursday, I'm giving a talk: Tools of Engagement: It's a Conversation, Stupid. I'll be out there for a few days, so I'll try Twitter for occasional posts about the goings-on there. Who knows -- it might even end up being listed as one of my tools of engagement.
If you want to follow along, on Twitter I'm agahran. Here's my Twitter feed. Don't worry, I'm not posting anything too intimate -- although I won't guarantee relevance or clarity for all.
It's an experiment. Check it out, and tell me what you think. Also, do you see any possible news, journalistic, or community applications for Twitter-like services? Please comment below.
