Comments on: Why Twitter Works

By: Use Twitter Search to Find Interesting People to Follow | dmiessler.com

Use Twitter Search to Find Interesting People to Follow | dmiessler.com — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:31:42 +0000

[...] When to Blog vs. Tweet | dmiessler.com ] [ Why Twitter Works | dmiessler.com [...]

By: Mercurial » Talk is easy

Mercurial » Talk is easy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:08:46 +0000

[...] loves twitter, now we have lists and top tens and the like. This, though, caught my attention: why twitter works: Twitter, on the other hand, by having the deepest personal penetration (mobile phone) combined [...]

By: Daniel Miessler

Daniel Miessler — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:13:54 +0000

Cool. I'm pretty sure it was you. It was a good comment–helped me grow. Thanks for that.

By: exabyte

exabyte — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:42:00 +0000

It may be … I don't know.. I've given feedback on your posts over the years…. so …. I don't know offhand.

By: Daniel Miessler

Daniel Miessler — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:13:54 +0000

Cool. I'm pretty sure it was you. It was a good comment–helped me grow. Thanks for that.

By: exabyte

exabyte — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:42:00 +0000

It may be … I don't know.. I've given feedback on your posts over the years…. so …. I don't know offhand.

By: Daniel Miessler

Daniel Miessler — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:41:52 +0000

By the way, is this the same exabyte that blasted me for my stance on global warming?

By: Daniel Miessler

Daniel Miessler — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:41:19 +0000

I mostly agree with you, but I think you're missing a subtle difference between email clients and text messaging. Email clients are still somewhat cumbersome on most phones. Many of them suck horribly.

For you and I they are pretty rich, because we use iPhone's and G1's, but that's not the experience for most people who have "regular" phones. I'd argue that something like 50-75% of people know how to use their text messaging on a regular phone, while something like 2-10% know how to use their phone's email client.

As such, I think texting still provides the most penetration.

By: exabyte

exabyte — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 08:20:11 +0000

It sounds like you're trying to work this out in your mind, through a blog post (which is ok). These days, it's just as easy to email on a mobile as it is to tweet. They're equally passive in that you can create them at any time and can both twitter and e-mail can be checked at any time, and can in turn, replied to at any time.

Tweets are simply better for the short radar blip of info, and email is for the longer-winded thoughts. On a mobile device, I prefer email simply because it accommodates any length and can do everything tweets can, in a unified interface without the 140 character limit.

It takes as many "presses" on my mobile for me to tweet as it does for me to e-mail on my phone (Android G1). In your blog post, you've really only described why e-mail OR twitter helps us keep in touch with those who have moved.

Twitter is simply a hybrid of e-mail and instant message, with a 140 character limit and the message body in the main thread: that's all.

My preference actually would be for friends and colleagues to simply join an IRC channel, and idle there. Use an SSH session from their smartphone (Android G1 or iPhone) to rejoin a SCREEN session connected to an IRSSI client and join the ongoing discussion, with a bot in place to send SMS's via some !command. One can dream, can't they?