Microblogging

The front page of twitter rolls selected tweets. A BBC World report on the Japanese disaster, commentary on the cricket World Cup, advertisements for iphone apps, teen angst, pop personality controversies. 

Conceived in 2006 originally with SMS in mind, by means of clever marketing the site grew exponentially within a period of months. The Twitter site is owned by a private corporate entity and employs a similar revenue model to Google: sponsored links enjoy search ranking priority.

The site operates along typical social media lines: You can follow favourites, are offerred suggestions over pages to visit that are based on your search history, you can communicate directly with other users.

I joined Twitter last year under the guise of @Anticraft. I did this as an add on to viewing Q&A. I found that the attempt to follow the discussion on the program was confused by the constant stream of commentary, sometimes concise, often insipid. A couple of weeks later the program started broadcasting selected tweets. Until enrolling in Information Management this was the extent of my micoblogging career. I have now reinstated myself in the medium and look forward to hearing from all of you.

Indeed Twitter as a medium of political message is highly effective. Social media forums such as this and Facebook are atttributed as major contributors to the recent Middle Eastern uprising. Other political phonemena that have been attributed include Kevin07 and Barak Obama. Twitter is powerful as a means of conveying a political message because there are millions of users worldwide and the constraint of 140 characters or less lends itself well to the simplification of a political message. 

Twitter and other microblogging sites provide for a point of concise focus. My local library service  has several articles on its website, but the Twitter feed for the same is communicating about one project in particular. Also highly popular is the deployment of a short comment and then a URL. Thus microblogging sites are a great place to place a banner that can lead to a more elaborated place on the web.

Famously, stuff said on Twitter cannot be unsaid. There is no option to recall a wayward tweet. Given the open nature of the site, and the fact that what you tweet may be retweeted, much care should be taken before choosing to broadcast your many pithy phrases.

Yammer on the other hand provides the opportunity for a closed forum that can be controlled by the administrator. As an example, already on the ISYS1166 Community we have witnessed students collaborating on assignments, assisting each other with IT Functionality, and sharing topics of interest in open discussion forums. Communities such of these can be highly valuable in organisations that have a geographical disparity; ie in ISYS1166 there are online students that are studying from all parts of Australia. The establishment of this community is a fantastic way to facilitate network relationships and collaborative work practises.

Regardless of the nature of the site, the devil is in the distraction. Much time can be spent (or wasted) in communication that is useful to the few, but not all, or in communication that is gratuitous. Organisations have been grappling with these issues since the advent of email; the potential for diverting oneself from the original purpose can cause just as many problems as it solves.