Humour

Getting to Twitter better

T A Balasubramanian on the extended reach of online socializing

We are tracking the diary notes of Doodh Byramji, fondly called Doodh, the dauntless IT research engineer at Baffle Technologies (or Baff-Tech). Byramji has been assigned a new project by his CEO, Baidyanath Baffle, the founder and owner of Baff-Tech.

Dear Diary (writes Byramji, continuing his notes):

I am seated at a restaurant called Quick Sip with Groucho Goose, Manager, Slinky Marketing Strategy for Confusing Clients, from Duckbill & Goose.

“Well, yes, Duckbill & Goose have taken to Twitter and the culture of micro-blogging like … like ducks to water,” says Groucho, as he gazes into his cell-phone screen periodically while sipping his coffee.

He is in the process of updating me about the use of Twitter, a tool that lets you post brief updates about your everyday thoughts and activities to the Web via browser, cell phone, or instant messaging.

“It seems like taking blogging to a supremely inane extreme, don’t you think?” I comment, sipping on my lemon tea. “For example, how useful is it for me to know that the rest of Baff-Tech is either focusing on getting into the office, or perhaps snoozing after a late night at work? You know, there are quite a few persistent folks on Twitter who seem to love posting “zzz ... zzz” which is a code for ‘gone to sleep.’ Would that make me work smarter?”

“You’re right, Doodh. I agree that when taken individually, most Twitter notes are mind-numbingly trivial. One productivity guru actually says that micro-blogging in general is just ‘pointless e-mail on steroids.’ One is forced to wonder at what can be said in such a super-short message, eh?”

“My friend, Bobo Jitter, CIO at Bazooka Corporation, says that while the name is delightfully disarming—making us all seem like just a bunch of happy birds, chirping away in our corporate tree-houses—it also makes him wary. He likens it to the addictive rush of blogging or e-mail, but refined into a quicker and nastier version.”

“Well, Doodh, whatever the general verdict, we think the true value of Twitter—and other similar banal micro-blogging sites for reporting your real-time location to friends—is in a cumulative sense, quite impressive.”

“And how do you come to that conclusion, Groucho?”

“The big kick comes from the surprising effects that dribble in from thousands of tweets from your gaggle of fellow-Twitters. That collective stream gives you an intimate portrait of their lives—as if you were on non-stop gossiping terms with every one of them in a coffee-shop. When I find that my friend Chico is ‘waiting at the airport to catch the next flight back,’ that is not much information. But when I get such silly updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about him. When my three closest comrades, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo send me dozens of updates a week for five months, I begin to develop an almost extra-sensory awareness of the people most important to me. It makes me feel that Duckbill & Goose is a human and clubby place with real people—which is more than I can say about most organizations I deal with.”

“Would you say that Twitter is actually contributing to a new kind of telepathy?”

“Hmm, that would be a big stretch, Doodh, but you can see that Twitter and all these constant-touch media create a kind of group social feeling. They give a bunch of geographically separated people a sense of itself, making possible all kinds of amazing feats of sharing. For instance, when I meet Chico for lunch after not having seen him for a month, I already know the major issues in his life—he was nervous about last week’s big meeting with a client; he got stuck in a rare summer thunderstorm; and he started smoking after two years.”

“Ah, but it makes sense only when you know the people you tweet with already.”

“True. Unless you’re doing something out of the ordinary, most people will find your everyday activities boring. Twitter is best when you are engaging your followers rather than updating them with the mundane details of your life. Think about this as a digital networking party. Talk to new people on Twitter the way you would if you were in a group. What I say is that when you Twitter, approach it the same way you would approach your blog or copy—only post anything that adds value to your followers, and you will see natural networking evolve.”

“All that trivia gathering and exchanging in electronic form? Whatever happened to good old face-to-face human bonding, Groucho? Like we are talking right now.”

“But we are both having these cell-phones ready to beep next to our cups, eh? That’s something your design genius could sort out, Doodh. If you look around, we seem to have become obsessed with making mobile versions of everything we used to get on our desktops. What does it say about people?”

“They like to carry their digital world around?”

“Yes, my boy. But it also means that there is no longer any real reason to look up at the world around you and deal with human beings in the flesh. Now, I am not a very social person because I just do not have a lot of time outside of family and work, and I dislike talking on the phone because I cannot put my thoughts in order as I speak.”

“That’s true for me too, Groucho. With a phone in hand, I feel compelled to blurt out things to fill the silence. Rather difficult to speak and think rationally at the same time, eh?”

“Then again, distance gives me perspective. With Twitter, I do not actually race out to meet a friend when they report their nearby location; I just mark it mentally as something to talk about the next time we meet. I get to see more into a person’s character through how they write, rather than through the clumsy polite small talk when we chat. Besides, I am grouchy when I speak extempore, as you might have observed. But I can say that my online professional networks have bloomed. I can connect with people where I am, at whatever time I happen to be available. I think the lines are blurring between the terms friend and online friend—to me, it’s just friends. Last week when I realized that in the past year I have met 10 Twitters face-to-face and spoken to another 8 Twitters on the phone on a regular basis—I was stunned. It does not seem to matter too much whether the person is standing in front of me or on the other side of the world when we are tweeting away about ourselves.”

“I agree that a friend is a friend is a friend. But, it’s a little different if you’ve never met your online pal in person. There’s something about a face-to-face meeting—even just one—that adds a critical dimension to my understanding of a friend. I don’t feel like I have the whole picture until I get some offline interaction.”

“Not for me, Doodh. We have our own preferences, eh? I like this coffee, and you like your lemon tea. What’s common is that we are having it at Quick Sip on the same table. With all this connective technology, we can find thousands of others with similar interests and bond with them. We’re richer in the sense that the pond we fish in is much larger, and we have great ‘fish finders’ in our boats now!”