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Twits for Twitter
What are you doing and who cares?
by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk
Last updated: 31 Mar 2008
An unusual thing that I was vaguely aware of existing but had never really taken a look at is Twitter, an odd craze that seems to be gaining popularity by the moment. The general idea of twitter is that you can tell anyone who knows your twitter address what your doing at any given time providing it can fit into 140 letters, this information is then displayed on your twitter page or through a selection of different methods such as RSS, SMS or widget. The site was originally used by Obvious purely as a way of communicating information within the business to busy colleagues but it was eventually released for public use in 2006 but not labelled as Twitter and turned into an individual service until April 2007, Twitter has since become extremely popular with business's and individuals alike.
The general benefits of having one are clear if you're using it within your work to inform your boss or colleagues that you're going to be late, or that you've finished re-writing that snippet of code for the website but outwith the work environment it starts to become a bit pointless. The knowledge that a friend of mine is eating tomato soup, making a small sculpture of a penguin using matchsticks or attempting to remove chewing gum from their keyboard is not going to vastly change my life for the better nor is it going to make my social connections with my friends stronger. I concede that if you wanted to display to the public what you're up to then use of the HTML widget would be ideal for that situation but otherwise I don't understand it. But go form your own opinion!
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