Twitter: Life’s Back Channel
When I saw David Beckemeyer’s agreement with Tom Keating’s dissing of Twitter, I did stop and think. And then I Twittered: Twitter is like an IRC backchannel for everyday life. It’s my link to a continual conversation that I can participate via whatever method makes the most sense. It’s also become a real nice way to contact certain people and to have them contact me. It’s SMS untethered from your phone. Whether or not you feel life needs a backchannel is a different question, though I would encourage the naysayers to look at al the possible usage before discounting it entirely.
I certainly don’t fault either of these fine gentlemen for their low opinion of Twitter. Being that connected is not for everyone and I certainly wouldn’t be one to suggest everyone and their brother needs to be that *connected. While there is a lot of “sharing” of private thoughts in a public way, it’s more than that. And unlike the boom box of the 1980, you can *choose to follow me (or anyone else for that matter) on Twitter or not. It’s hard to ignore the guy with the loud boom box when he walks by, but you can easily ignore the self-obsessed geek who updates 50 times day.
