[kwlug-disc] Twitter and Identi.ca

[Andrew Kohlsmith (Mailing List Account)]

On December 23, 2009 09:16:52 am Chris Irwin wrote:
> Does everybody use the twitter and identi.ca web interfaces? Do you
> use a desktop program? If you use both services, how do you manage
> updates?

I don't use identi.ca nor am I interested in it, so I'll restrict what I'm 
talking about to my twitter use. :-)

I very, very, very rarely ever use twitter from a PC. I don't like the web 
interface and I don't think I'd ever run Yet Another App to have it on the 
desktop. I use Tweetie on the iphone; when I'm waiting at a long light, in the 
store, on hold... it's very nice.  I follow local feeds for things like 570 
news, the record, kw downtown news, etc., as well as cbc. It's a very nice 
interface for that.  I have a few people I follow as well, and I generally 
find them through the geolocation search; I'm mostly interested in seeing what 
people are tweeting about around me.

Tweetie is very nice, but he's mostly abandoned it for Tweetie 2, which I find 
has some nice features but the usability has taken a real downward turn. I'm 
hoping it can get cleaned up, but I kind of doubt it.

As an aside, I think it's absolutely awful how iphone app creators are coming 
out with "v2" "v3" etc in order to get another $3 or whatever from you. They 
spruce up the app a little and crapify it in order to justify the new version.  
The app store has a very big flaw in it where you can't mark significant 
upgrades, and another fatal flaw in where you can't preview an app.  Reviews 
are absolutely no good, and Lite versions don't give any indication on how the 
real functionality is, but I digress. 

> I ask because while I use both of these micro-blog services, I don't
> really get much advantage from them yet. I'm currently using "gwibber"
> to read updates, and post using yet another service ("ping.fm") over
> jabber. The whole situation currently feels like I'm getting
> intermittent status updates on people's pets and meals using
> TCP-over-deck-of-cards. Has anybody else had better experiences? Or
> maybe a better workflow?

Stop expecting Twitter to be an IM service. It's a global message bus. You 
choose which messages (people/products/areas) you're interested in and then 
just check it once in a while to see what's new.  The trending topics are 
sometimes good for a laugh, and the geolocation search is very neat to find 
interesting things around you when you're travelling.

-A.