Twitter, In the Information Stack

This is a follow on from a previous post, Blogs, in the Information Stack where I started to look at my different information technology stacks.

Today I want to look at Twitter.

If you have never looked at twitter, but have heard of it, then you are likely to be confused about what I am saying.. because I am sure your view of it is one of…

“umm isn’t that the one where people send global sms’s ( texts ) about what they are doing, even to the point of describing their bodily functions… umm yes that is bound to be a great source of information… now moving on from this stupid blog article.”

But thankfully twitter is just a tool used by people, and where there are interesting people there are interesting comments.

So duh… interesting people interesting comments… how is this really part of my information stack, other than perhaps a bit of textual voyeurism.

Here is how I have found myself using it, and the value it has added – but to understand that lets take a step back, and talk about the other more typical sources of information :

Books : This is the classic tried and tested method. It is thought out, researched, and edited – but usually dated by time its is printed – but that in many times is okay because they may not always be technology bound.

White Papers / Articles : These are like the middle ground between a book and a blog. Researched and edited, but slightly smaller – also quite infrequent.

Interviews / Conferences : These are the middle ground between the White Papers and the Blogs. It is kind of informal discussion about well researched things – these come along quite seldom ( per person ).

Blogs: These tend to come out quite quickly and give an indication of the view and opinions of the blogger. Typically the blogger is well versed in their topic but there is no expectation for solid research or formal editing. It is understood to be more opinion based or conceptual which may link to formal documentation.

What you may have noticed in the chronology that I put these in, is that there is a relationship between the medium and the distance from the thoughts of the author. The further away from the author you get the more refined and edited the work becomes.

Twitter is unique in that you get, for the first time ( without working with them )  access to the day to day ( for some hour to hour ) thoughts of the people you read / hear; You get exposed to the technologies that they are playing with; You get exposed to the people that they talk to and find interesting, you see what they are struggling with.

And this is just the tip of the ice-berg of what you can do with twitter.

Twitter search gives you the ability to eavesdrop onto any conversation based on key word searches, like who is talking about Erlang. Again not who has blogged about it because they now claim to be experts… but who is playing with it, what pains are they having ,what do they think etc etc… and what’s more.. you can ask them - directly.

If you are interested now, might I suggest you check out this blog post How To Twitter - First Steps and a Twitter Glossary by Scott Hanselman and enjoy the new source of raw information you can now get.