Jackie Danicki

Jemima Kiss has a succinct and well-written profile in the Guardian of one of my most-used sites, Twitter. As Jemima says:

It’s not a complex idea, but the tool is in its infancy and needs to be nurtured before it develops as a functional, personal tool. Users need a critical mass of friends, and then the real conversations begin. Landing on the homepage with its thousands of random, out of context messages from strangers will mean nothing, but its dedicated users share ideas, ask questions, suggest meetings and post useful links and stories. And once you’re there, you’re hooked.

Tweets, as they have come to be known, might seem to be filled with mundane observations, but these later become rather charming details of our day-to-day lives that would otherwise be lost. “Every moment has a caption” is the Twitter mantra, and this has come to be known as micro-blogging, a “capsule of your life in 140 characters,” says Williams.

It is kind of pathetic to admit, but the first site I hit in the morning, on my BlackBerry, before I even get out of bed, is mobile Twitter. I especially love that my friends in London have already been up for several hours, so there are lots of fresh messages, links to interesting articles, and just plain funny remarks waiting for me when I wake up. (This is why I don’t actually get out of bed until I’ve been awake for a good twenty minutes. Too busy following links from tweets, responding to tweets, etc.)

Filed under: Life