Twitter seems to be exploding all over the blogosphere at the moment.
When I first took a look at what all the fuss was about I was a bit bewildered. I certainly shared the sentiments of Stephen’s post where he questions the real value of Twitter.
I’m still not convinced I know what the real point is, but as with many new services like this the real value hasn’t yet been discovered. Ian Delaney has a good article on New Media Knowledge that discusses some of the issues around Twitter.
However I really believe it’s important to be using and learning new services all the time – some of the time I spend doing that will be wasted, but some of it will be a good investment as it’ll give me knowledge and skills that help me be more effective.
So I’ve registered – my Twitter page is at www.twitter.com/simonwakeman. I’ve added a few people I know as friends, but do let me know if you’re on Twitter so I can add you too.
At the moment I see Twitter as being an opportunity to post short thoughts in between blog posts. Sometimes I don’t have time to write a full blog post, or the random half-formed idea doesn’t really merit a blog post.
In the past these thoughts would disappeared into the ether, but with Twitter I can publish them.
Twitter might add value if it turns out that other people are thinking something similar and an idea can develop on Twitter, when if Twitter hadn’t existed the initial idea wouldn’t have snowballed. Perhaps there’s a role for Twitter as a tool for enabling innovation?
Or it might just be another great way for me to spend even more time doing nothing on the web. We’ll see…