Twitter as a Conversation Tool?
August 3rd, 2008
Really?
This is an observation more than a rant so please bear with me. I see a lot of Twits using Twitter as a kind of public chat room. But when I read the conversation it’s only one-sided, or in other words all I can see is the comment made by the person who I am following.
Reading only part of the conversation doesn’t make any sense to me. So if I want to understand what they are talking about, I have to click on the link to the other party.
Which then takes me over to their Twitter page. Even then it’s still piece-meal trying to figure it all out, and if the conversation is more than just two comments it can really be annoying.
So back-and-forth, back-and-forth I go. What a nuisance!
It’s such a cumbersome interface I will probably will not bother clicking, unless of course something really (really) intrigues me. But that is very rare indeed.
Consider this: When you are having a “conversation” with someone, how often do you actually converse in real time? If you are like me, almost never. It’s all so surreal, an almost disembodied experience of sorts. Need I say any more?
Twitter as a conversation tool? It’s not for me. But as a marketing tool amongst others, well that’s a different story. More on that later…
What do you think?
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agree with you BB - Twitter is a good conversation tool between two people - but it’s not a communal conversation unless everyone is following everyone else in the conversation (and even then it’s scattered).
That’s why when I want a group conversation I ask questions on Plurk (threaded comments) and when I’m researching a topic and want feedback from individuals I use Twitter. Similarly it’s good for marketing because that doesn’t always need a group conversation either.
I think it’s about finding what the tool is ideal for and just going with that and not expecting much else.
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Hi Darren.
Yes, I’ve used other tools and clones out there like FriendFeed, Plurk and Twirl (amongst others) that can make the conversation a little better. In this post I was primarily commenting on the shortcomings of Twitter since most users out there are still using the Twitter interface.
This post is an intro for a series where I intend to discuss the alternatives in more detail. I agree with what you say about finding the right tool that works for you, and sometimes using more than one tool is necessary for the function that you require it for.
Thanks for the input.
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Blog Bloke reply on August 3rd, 2008 8:18 pm:
Of late I’ve resorted to using Summize (which now points to http://search.twitter.com/) to follow conversations. If you enter the person’s twitter handle in the search field you can get a better idea of the context of the partial conversations you are seeing. It also (mostly) detects when there are new posts for your search term and prompts you to refresh to see the latest.
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Hi John. I’ve found Summize’s performance to be spotty at best. But that was awhile back so I’ll take another look. Thanks.
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Blog Bloke reply on August 3rd, 2008 8:42 pm:
The other tool that can help is http://quotably.com/
again - spotty but can add a lot when you’re attempting to follow a conversation.
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Can I quote you on that?
I prefer it over Summize for it’s threading feature.
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Blog Bloke reply on August 3rd, 2008 9:43 pm:
I agree it is incredibly hard to follow some conversations. More so if they are spread out over time.
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