04 July 2008

I Twitter!

Twitter. It's everywhere now. I couldn't have missed me, could it?

Basically, Twitter is like a blog, but there is a140 character limit, which makes it more suitable for some uses.

I first thought Twitter had only two uses:

  1. reporting details of your life nobody cares about, like "I just went to the bathroom and made the biggest... mistake ever reporting about it".
  2. losing weight publicly (or tracking any other goal).
And then Penelope Trunk blogged about Twitter and some people called it a "new technology". That's two very wrong things.

First, Penelope Trunk. I like reading her career advice blog, but I don't really trust her advice. She writes not to post one's naked pictures on the web - what a wisdom! A few months later, a guest blogger called "Google Guy" writes: "Those photos don’t matter as much as you think". She gives "advice at the intersection of work and life" but is getting divorced and blames it on the fact that her husband stayed at home with the kids. And she twitters:
Asking my therapist: on my blog post about kissing the farmer, should I leave the comments from my not-yet ex?
(Want some advice at the intersection of love and life? Don't let your marriage fall apart. Don't blame divorce on a single bad decision. Don't kiss when you're involved with someone else. Don't kiss a guy when all you can say about him is "the farmer". Don't give intimate details to thousands of readers. Do hide the lame stuff.)

Second, "new technology". Twitter is a bit like a blog, but with shorter posts (who forbid you to write shorties before?) and a bit like your info on your instant messenger (except it's logged better). You gotta give me a lot more to call something "new technology".

Okay, so that was me and Twitter two days ago. Until my dearest Lifehacker gave me great inspiration. I added a few Twitters on the side of the blog and found more smart uses to the thing. But the biggest thing is: I have starter my own one! It's a combination of goal-tracking, note-taking and bookmark-managing and it's dedicated to learning languages. I'm just starting the summer holidays (and work on Monday!), so I'm trying to plan language learning for this summer. I was thinking about setting up a new blog for it, like Lila Loves Yoga, but a blog is too much work, so let's all welcome the new Twitter: Lila Loves Lingos.

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