It’s now been a month since I’ve begon my Twitter experience, mostly because I didn’t get what all the excitement was about. So do I after one month in? The answer to that is yes, to a certain extent.
It’s been a fun experience so far. I’ve used it to share links to friends (on a side note: none of my “real” friends use Twitter, but a couple follow my tweets through RSS), updates to this blog and my Squidoo lenses and thrown in some personal views as well. I haven’t gone as far as writing things like “Having breakfast” or “Going to take a shower” but I have tweeted some personal messages. I also enjoyed finding out how to personalize my Twitter page and testing new apps (I use Nambu) and add ons for this blog (the wonderful Twitter Tools) in order to update Twitter. Finding and following people I find interesting and read their updates has also been insightful.
But there’s still a learning curve for me in order to use Twitter effectively and see the real value. Maybe it’s because none of the people I hang out with in real life are on Twitter, but I haven’t used it as the great conversation tool that so many claim it to be. I also still have to find out how I can use the trends and # hashtags better. Getting followed has also been a quite interesting experience; to be honest only one person that follows me I do know in real life in some way (I of course follow her back), two I kind of know through Squidoo, but all the others are completely unknown to me (even one has had his/her/its account suspended because it was probably a spamming account). So I still don’t get the deeper meaning or value that some give Twitter credit for.
But the value for me now is that it’s been a fun experience. So I’ll continue after this first month (not going to be part of that 60%) and see how my Twitter use evolves further. And of course if you want to join me in my Twitter experience you can always start following me.
The above video (accompanied with this site) is a fun initiative to tell people to embrace their inner geek. And it seems geekdom is on the rise. On tv there are characters like Liz Lemon, Chuck and Leonard and Sheldon who clearly are geeks. Using social media like Facebook, Flickr or Twitter is going mainstream and so is posting videos and blogposts. So is being a geek fashionable now?
I can remember not so long ago I was talking to some of my friends about my nightly Counter Strike matches and how I tweaked my settings. Or talked about the forums I hung out at and moderated. I was met with blank stares. Now they come up to me and show me their latest smartphone and the fun things they can do with it or ask me to join a social media site. Maybe it’s because technology is being intertwined more and more into our lives. We work with computers on our jobs. We mail, text, call and interact through phones and computers. Or we plan a meet up between friends through social sites.
So if our work and social life demand for us to use technology, we don’t have another choice than to become a geek.
I love visions of the future. When I was a young boy I would read about flying cars, colonies on Mars, intelligent houses and watch telephones. And years later I still love to see future concepts.
The BBC walked around in Microsoft’s Home of the Future to see what their vision is on home computing in a couple of years time (which seems to be placing large tables and surfaces around the house with embedded technology).
It’s interesting to see how large companies see the future. Not only for the geek-factor of discovering new technologies and possibilities, but also because it gives us an inside look of what kind of products and technology a company will focus on. These concepts will of course be up to the scrutiny of focus groups and other forms of market testing before they’ll be found at your local computer (or maybe furniture in this example) store. As with all visions of the future it remains to be seen if it will come true.
Because the flying car I was promised is still not in front of my house.
As a sidenote: here’s an idea. Since T-Mobile seems to like social media this much, they might want to team up with Twitter. They could work together to create the ultimate mobile Twitter experience. This would not only give T-Mobile mobile traffic and a unique selling point, but also would provide Twitter with a way of earning revenue (which seems to be the one point missing from a company that’s valued at 250 million dollar; well…maybe they’ll sell to Apple if you believe the rumors).
