Comments on: Twitter: Seriously short stories versus gateway to substantive content

By: denisbhancock

denisbhancock — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:38:17 +0000

Thanks Clare – excellent point. I probably jumped too quickly to the angle of distinguishing between the two mindsets (and using a quote specific to the short-story mindset), without providing the context that for many people (like yourself) the tweets are used in support of more substantive content.

And of course, just because this one aspect of the approach is not my cup of tea doesn’t mean it isn’t great for many people… such is the great thing about Twitter, social media, etc.

By: Clare Bell

Clare Bell — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:28:55 +0000

Hi Denis,

I’d just like to add something that the Globe and Mail article didn’t say, and that is that most of the Twitter novelette story posts are accompanied by “#rathalink” posts, which give more information about the creatures in the story, since many are based on existing fossils. They also link to my published books.
in this Twitter experiment, I’m trying to combine story entertainment with portals to information on paleontology.

Thanks for commenting on the idea.

By: denisbhancock

denisbhancock — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:40:51 +0000

David – thanks for the comment. So are you saying on one of those platforms I can filter messages so I only see the ones that (say) link to external content?

I just tried Twitturly (the MyTop100), and it tells me there were no links found in the last week – so something doesn’t seem to be working. Could be user error though… it’s been known to happen .

By: davidgifford

davidgifford — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:31:42 +0000

So the thing about Twitter and their growth is that third parties are filling the gaps that they as a company don’t have the means to fill.

Your “gap” is filled by services such as microplaza.com and twitturly.com.

It’s still an immature medium and finding these folks is part of the game of making it work the way you think it should.

It still a bit scary that this ecology of search services is so random and dependent on an immature API and service — there are no guarantees that such companies will be able to rely on the current feeds in the future. But what the heck – its fun to be on th ecutting edge.