April 28, 2008 at 2:09 pm · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile

I always half-enjoy Twitter. Sometimes it’s brilliant, sometimes it really, really, really winds me up.

I’ve got it enabled so that I get updates on my Google instant messenger. I couldn’t cope with 250 texts every few days on my phone. The real issue, I find, is context.

Take, for example, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. I thoroughly enjoy getting an insight into what he’s thinking, what he’s doing and so on. However it’s really difficult to follow, thus:

There is little value to me in knowing that Michael thinks that Kingmanor has made a fair point. I don’t know what the point is. And I can’t be bothered to go searching to find out because I’m in the middle of working.

So. Who’s problem is this? Well, it’s not Michael’s. It’s not Kingmanor’s. They, and I daresay a few other people are entertained, enlightened or excited by that comment.

It’s my problem. I just don’t understand it. At this level, then, my interaction with Twitter becomes highly offensive — in the context of carrying out my work day. Much like a telephone call, many of my Twitter messages are becoming interruptive rather than incidentally useful.

Then again, could this be a problem for Michael? I don’t know. Potentially.

It’s all about how you use Twitter. For example, I only ever use Twitter (my Twitter account) to send out blog post updates or to deliver updates that I hope my followers find of some (small) value. Each Tweet is a package in itself — it can be understood irrespective of whether you ‘know’ me or not.

Just now, I got an update from Mashable:

mashable: Akoha Raises $1.9M to ‘Play it Forward’ ( http://tinyurl.com/5oehum )

There’s enough information in that Tweet to enable me to evaluate it correctly and do something about it. I got value from that message. I didn’t get any value from Michael’s ‘That’s a fair comment’ message. If anything, I felt outside the game.

This is a Twitter-wide issue and certainly not just related to Michael at TechCrunch. I’d welcome your perspective.

Is my 1990s brain misconfigured for dealing with this level of continual information flow?