Twitter?

I'm not the most active blogger, I realize. I often think: this would be a good something- something to blog about. But that thought rarely makes it to the guide.

I have been "Twitter"ing for the last week or so and I think it's pretty fun. For those of you who don't know what Twitter is (and my super-techie brother didn't know--so I guess it's not as big as I thought), it's basically what some people have termed a "micro-blogger." In other words, it's kind of like a "this is what I am doing or thinking right this second" kind of blog post. So, it sacrifices the potential of a thoughtful, longer post, for the immediacy of a potentially mundane daily activities update.

No wonder, then, that when you read someone's Twitter feed, the site calls it "following" them. (Oh, how the net continues to bring out the inner voyeur and stalker in us all.) For you Facebookers, it's really just like the status updater in Facebook and, in fact, I actually fixed it so that when I update my twitter, it automatically updates my Facebook status. Also, I can post "tweets" from my cellphone via a text message (which also, in turn, updates my Facebook status) and also receive updates from the people that I am following as texts.

For now, this is just one more fun way of self-presentation on the web, but I can't help but think of how this phenomenon might impact my research interests. While I am less interested in self-presentation per se, I am really quite interested in how communities organize and get things done either via the web or by capitalizing on the web's power in some way. Twitter is already being used in creative ways by people to aid the organization, communication, and impact of community activities. So I wonder how I can talk about Twitter with my students--without just saying: check it out, this is awesome! What kind of rhetoric, exactly, is being produced when we tweet?

Anyway, for those interested in receiving more frequent updates from me, you can go to my Twitter page (linked above), and click on the rss feed and my updates (usually 1-4 per day) will then show up in your rss reader. Or(!), you could always join Twitter and see what all the hullabaloo is about. For those still in the camp that actually visit physical blogs, I have created a twitter widget that shows my updates right over there in the left column. Enjoy.