Convalesco

Twitter is my favourite micro-blogging engine. It’s not filled up with nonsense like Facebook, it does not require for the user to switch the focus from the current application or screen¹ or whatever you are doing. If you have Linux or Macintosh², tweeter pops up a bubble on the left upper side of the screen without disturbing your work. It does not pop up windows like MSN or ring like Skype while you’re in the middle of something. It’s very polite and smooth.

While there are some alternatives, I never tried one. Actually I just saw a few alternatives on some Adobe Air clients, like twhirl, which I like and others. But none of my friends ever requested a new service, similar to twitter, so I’m fine with tweeter I guess. You all know by now that, in order for you switch to an application, even it’s better by far, i.e. iChat is far better than MSN for im or video conference or you-name-it, you need your peers to switch too. Some times this is not possible, due to high incapability of your peers to understand basic things how to make a bookmark of an internet page and other times just because your client is not fully compatible with their operating system, or they are lazy like me and dislike having 51 IM’s open running on the background, even if the computer is an iMac 2.88 Ghz dual core duo.

Tweeter of course, does not have this problem, because you can find clients for every operating system. Different clients may exist, depending on your desktop, but all of them use the same simple API. A twitter client is simple. No need for video or audio support. Just a “jingle” when the message arrives! While there many clients that will allow you to post to twitter and facebook at once, I found facebook annoying as hell. I join to facebook regularly because two of my closest friends hang in there all day long, through office or home and I know that I don’t have to text them. I just log in to facebook and send them a message. I’m pressing them to install and actually use twitter, but I did not converted them yet! I’m working on it though!

The only thing that could mess up your twitter account is, as in facebook but in a much larger scale, accepting friends and following people that you are not interested in. Although it’s a simple as a concept, most people in the urge to make friends alias followers, they accept people who are not in the same area, they don’t have the same interests and they don’t know them even remotely! I made this mistake on facebook. I hit “accept” every time someone asked a friendship. I found myself deleting almost 3 pages of friends because, we were not friends and most likely we would never be. Why would I care if they took a quiz test and find out that they look like Paris Hilton. Even worst is when you do something like that on twitter. You will receive the apparently, most silly and less important updates on you twitter account. Of course there are people out there who think that if they do get 7 millions of followers who will never reply or care about them, they will instantly become… what? A celebrity? No, I don’t want to be like Paris Hilton. I may sound a little narcissist but I like my self and my life as it is.

Recently I’m receiving a dozen of invitations on twitter. When I see people following more than 50 or 60 persons on twitter, I get a bit nervous on letting receive my tweets too. It’s not that I care about my privacy, I won’t issue my credit card on twitter, nor I think that the Matrix has me but I prefer to keep it low and give a chance to the people who have the same interest as me and people that I know personally. Right now on my twitter followers are: People I know from the Greek Linux and Macintosh community. I may never see them, but I’ve spend hours of litigation with them through mailing lists or on line (IRC, Forums, etc). I have a couple of friends that I know them personally. These people unfortunately don’t use tweeter often so, I have to text them elsewhere and three people I don’t know, nor have a clue about who they are, but I accepted them because I found interesting their profile. I must say, that I don’t find interesting their updates though.

So, here is my advice: Don’t accept or ask randomly for friendliness and followups if you are not hired by some social entertainment industry and you don’t get paid for having many friends. It sucks and it’s utterly stupid and most of the times.

1. I assume that you as me, use a client and not the web interface to tweet. Now which client, you might ask? A good one! Is my answer! [↩]
2. On the Mac you need Growl installed I guess [↩]