To Twitter or Not to Twitter?
Ok, I did it. I started to “Twitter”.
Actually, I created a Twitter account a few months ago but only started actively using it a couple of days ago. Mind you, I don’t change my habits easily. I’m almost never the first person to try something new. I wait for others to play the guinea pig and see if the idea is going to catch on to the mass market before I invest my time. For example, I never created a MySpace page, and I’m glad I didn’t. I do participate in Facebook to keep up with friends and relatives, but that’s a passive thing that requires very little time. The upside is really good if you like staying current with friends/family.
Twittering and blogging are very different than passive social networking tools like Facebook or MySpace or even a website. The fact is that Twittering and blogging require regular attention in order for them to have value, in my opinion. Twitter more so than blogs.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is what I call one-line zingers that people send out. It’s sort of like text messaging in its brevity. Each Twitter message is limited to 140 characters. Twitter messages can be news events (Accenture dumped Tiger), comments on personal status (I’m getting a lobotomy), and so on. People who are interested in what you are doing can decide to follow your Twitter, which means that their Twitter messages will be sent to your Twitter account. Those who are really, really interested in what you are doing can also receive Twitter messages on their phone via text message.
You can send Twitter messages from your computer or from your phone via text messaging. According to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, up to 60,000 people (assuming they’ve decided to follow you) receive your Twitter message in a matter of seconds after you send it. Click here for a short presentation on Twitter at the TED conference by Williams.
In months past, I’ve asked myself what value Twitter could add to my personal life. My conclusion at that time was and still today, is not much. I’m connected with my friends and family, who live all over the continent and in other countries, via Facebook. I don’t need real-time info about what my family and friends are doing and I’m really not interested in providing real-time info to them about what I’m doing. If there’s an urgent matter, they call me or I call them.
If I didn’t see the value of Twitter in my life, then why did I sign up for it?
For me, I see Twitter as a potentially valuable tool in my job. However, you have to realize that I’m in the gossip business (self-deprecating definition of a journalism) so its value may be more for me than you depending on the value you place on near-real-time information. From my activity on it these past few days, I see the upside. I’m not sure how good of a Twitter provider I’ll be yet, but I’m following about 64 other Twitter-ers and find the information they are providing useful.
I’m far from optimizing my use of Twitter. The people I’m following are providing news updates for the most part, not personal updates, which is the way I like it. If I find that people are sending personal updates, I “unfollow” them. I really don’t care to know if someone is at the dentist’s office. To decide who to follow, I searched for terms such as “GIS,” “GPS,” “mapping,” and similar, as well as for particular companies I want to follow. I spent an hour or so doing this. I’m sure I will add and subtract many more Tweeters, but this is a start and I’m already receiving a wide array of Tweets. Following is what I’ve got on my Twitter list right now, at least the first six entries:
An easy #cycling tour of the back roads through the West San Francisco Bay foothills http://ow.ly/LBYM #bicycling21 minutes ago from HootSuite
“The Use of Game Engines in GIS” http://bit.ly/4EKchz35 minutes ago from API
Forum Post: Trimble Office Software and Windows 7: Looking for anyone who has installed either Trimble Pathfinder O… http://bit.ly/4wjcshabout 1 hour ago from twitterfeed
“MapQuest Adds StreetView-type Imagery” http://bit.ly/8fSJeKabout 1 hour ago from API
ArcSDE 9.3.1 SP1 released: http://bit.ly/8PQvHf ArcIMS 9.3.1 SP1 Released: http://bit.ly/5OgK6V #ESRIabout 1 hour ago from Seesmic
lass=”entry-content”>Want to keep track of the latest discussion on Spatial Roundtable? Check out the #RSS feed for comments: http://tr.im/HBZn #ESRIabout 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
If you want to follow my Twitter, my Twitter name is GPSGIS_Eric. I promise to keep my Tweets relevant and frequently infrequent.
What’s this got to do with GIS and Geospatial technology?
If you’ve followed this column, you’ll recall I’ve mentioned social networking on one or more occasions. Geospatial data and positioning technology (eg. GPS) are a huge part of Location-Based Services (LBS) that will be a significant technology in our lives in the next five years.
Last August, Twitter announced they were working on a Geotagging API that would provide developers the ability to geotag Tweets. As of now, the release is official and they have announced that Twitter developers such as (quote from Twitter blog):
“Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others are already supporting this new functionality (go try them out now!) in interesting ways that include geotagging your tweets and displaying the location from where a tweet was posted. The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations. Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community.”
I’m not sure where Twitter is going to end up yet. Maybe it will morph into something different. The entire LBS landscape is really wide open right now. A lot of people will make a lot of money off of different LBS applications. Some will stick, most will not. The challenge for me (and you) is to decide which ones to invest our time in.
Just this morning, I received an email invite from my son to join him on…
….deep sigh.
Thanks and see you next week.
P.S. I received an email from Jon Sperling, who contributed an article on TIGER data earlier this Fall, with a link to a paper he co-wrote on using Twitter to “…demonstrate how to use Twitter to automatically obtain breaking news from the tweets posted by Twitter users, and to provide a map interface for reading this news, since the geographic location of the user as well as the geographic terms comprising the tweets play an important role in clustering tweets and establishing clusters’ geographic foci.”
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