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Two Twitters, one Daniel

Jul 1st, 2009
by Jim Reverend.
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7,223 updates ago, I started a Twitter account: twitter.com/revjim. I had locked updates and all was good and right in the world and I knew all of 3 people using the service.

Things have changed.

As I mentioned in detail on Jonathan's LJ, people use Twitter in very different ways. I have two very different kinds of followers:

1) People interested in my website, my photography, my personal thoughts, and links of interest to me.

2) People interested in the current mostly mundane details of my local life and making small talk about it.

Now keep in mind, there are people who fit both categories. In fact most people who fit in group 2 probably at lesat partly live in group 1. However, not all of those people would prefer to subscribe to each individual source of information as opposed to using twitter to aggregate it all.

Despite the fact that I believe I should continue to use technology in a way that does me the most good, at the same time, if I can do something without putting myself out too far to make more people more happy with the way I'm using that technology, then it becomes even more useful.

So, I now have two Twitter accounts.

twitter.com/revjim: This will be manual updates about my life and, for the most part, all original content. Full of "Celeste just pooped in the potty", "I'm getting coffee", "I am SOOOOO drunk", "I'm eating a chicken sandwich", "I have a headache", "I'm in El Paso!", "I just bought a iPod Touch", and "I really hate Apple". There will be location based updates as well (from Loopt or whatever tool I choose). There will also be @replies to other friends, etc. This will be my primary use account. The status updates will be syndicated to Facebook as they are now. Lots of noise here. Very little signal. Mostly useless information but still a large part of the "fun" of Twitter. Should average about 20 updates a day though 80% of them will be replies to people you may not follow, in which case you won't even see them. This will be locked/private.

twitter.com/revjimweb: Website updates, photos, and links to longer, more thought out posts all over the web including comments made on other blogs and journals. It will consist of only links and responses to those links. Should average about 5 updates a day, give or take. However, there may be some replies if followers choose to interact with the content in that way. For instance, replying directly in Twitter, using Tweetboard, or authenticating with Disqus through Twitter.

Follow (or UnFollow) as you desire. You won't hurt my feelings either way.

(and I may get a few in the wrong place as I switch all my tools over, so bear with me.)

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Posted in: life, life-blog, technology.
Tagged: · · ·

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  • Neither of these match what twitter is functionally adept for.

    I mean, an RSS feed does what your #1 does. Any blog software can do that better.

    #2 is something I just don't get. The truly mundane things don't matter so much as to need instantaneous replies.

    IMHO, twitter would have been great for "let's all meet at blah", or "OMFG MY FOOT WAS CUT OFF!" It's effectively a group list for SMS. Instead, it amounts to "Stop what you're doing and listen to me describe my poop in 160 characters or less!"

    I honestly can't fathom why people dig that, but there are plenty of people who do.
  • It really is an odd thing that so many people use it in this way, but they do. I thought, at first, the whole "I'm doing this so join me" type update would be great. And, in actuality, about 5 times I've managed to meet up with people solely because of twitter interaction. But, for the most part, it really is like sitting around in an IRC channel all day and talking about everything but really nothing.

    And, as far as RSS for the other goes... YES... I agree. I only started using it in this fashion because so many other people wish to follow this way that it seemed appropriate to do so. People tend to enjoy instant notification in a reverse chronological format with no hierarchy more so than they do something orderly and easy to use like, say, Google Reader. I have Google Reader FULL of stuff to read. But the truth is, if you announce your blog entries on Twitter, I'm more likely to read them RIGHT NOW. Google Reader I'll get to some time this week. But... with RSS I'm guarantee I'll see it eventually. With Twitter, if I'm really busy, whatever happened during that window of time get quickly skimmed and then tossed out.

    Such a strange, yet seemingly common, usage pattern.
  • Thank you -- this pleases me greatly. And we all know that it's all about me.
  • In exchange, I'll take a squeeze of the breast of the next woman you manage to con into your bed. :)
  • I'm following both. I always follow all of your stuff. I actually didn't have a problem with seeing everything in revjim, I was just slightly annoyed that "Tweet this comment as @you" was the default in your disqus form.

    I still don't see a huge need for this type of separation, and if I start seeing duplicate stuff on both of these I will be, again, only slightly annoyed.
  • The separation is both good and bad for me. Good because it'll let me make some chatter that should probably be private more private. But bad because I have to deal with two accounts. It shouldn't be TOO bad, though, since most of the "revjimweb" stuff is automated and the "revjim" is manual and checked / updated as I have time through the day.

    I'm not sure about the "default" option there. I don't get to pick the default, so I'm guessing it defaults to on. But, it also seems to remember my last choice for the next comment, so, who knows.

    Once I get the kinks worked out, you should see very little if any duplicates.

    And, if the Disqus swap worked, then this should come from "revjimweb". We'll see.
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