{"id":392,"date":"2009-06-21T21:51:40","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T21:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/06\/21\/confessions_of_a_twitter_fritterer_slightly_hipper_but_a_little_bitter\/"},"modified":"2009-06-21T21:51:40","modified_gmt":"2009-06-21T21:51:40","slug":"confessions_of_a_twitter_fritterer_slightly_hipper_but_a_little_bitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2009\/06\/21\/confessions_of_a_twitter_fritterer_slightly_hipper_but_a_little_bitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Twitter Fritterer: slightly hipper but a little bitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m guessing that pretty much everyone has mixed feelings about the micro-blogging service, Twitter<\/a>. The ability to rapidly post ‘tweets’ of no more than 140 characters can easily be seen as both a blessing and a curse.<\/p>\n

\tI was certainly in the skeptical camp for a long time and easily resisted the temptation to sign up. Blogging in 140 characters, I scoffed, what a pitiful waste of time! And so I might have remained, had events in May not propelled me into the twittersphere. Though I’ve only been tweeting for a month, that’s eons in the twitterverse and so it’s high time I blogged about the experience.<\/p>\n

\tIt all started while I was attending the dramatic Skeptics in the Pub meeting in support of Simon Singh, who is currently being sued for libel by the British Chriopractic Association. Don’t tell me you didn’t know…!<\/a> Unexpectedly finding myself standing at the very front of the crowd, I was able to snap pictures of the speakers with my iPhone and upload them to facebook, a purely visual form of live-blogging I’d not tried before. That got me thinking.<\/p>\n

\t\"Dave<\/a>
\nDave Gorman at Skeptics in the Pub<\/em>
\n <\/p>\n

\tI blogged about the meeting<\/a> later that night and during the ensuing discussion became aware that the issue of Singh’s libel case was very much humming on Twitter. With encouragement from Clare<\/a>, I finally took the plunge. You can now follow me at @Stephen_Curry<\/a>. If you want to.<\/p>\n

\t\"Twitter\"<\/a>
\nPoo-tee-weet!<\/em>
\n <\/p>\n

\tThe value of Twitter for keeping abreast of hot news was immediately apparent. The introduction of the ‘hashtag’ #singhbca<\/a> made it easy to stay in touch with the Singh case since those following closely made sure to tag their tweets with this marker. That way I got early alerts about the publication of press releases from the British Chiropractic Association and the resulting analysis of the community who are tracking this issue. And boy are the BCA taking a beating. Having finally in this past week coughed up the list of papers<\/a> that they claim as the evidence in support of their claim against Singh, the twittering\/blogging community is now taking a very close look at the quality of this evidence. Martin Robbins of The Lay Scientist<\/a> is, among others, at the forefront of this effort. Check out his recent post<\/a> on this BCA press release (which also includes links to other bloggers who are contributing to the analysis).<\/p>\n

\tI don’t know where these people get the time to do such sterling work (which is subjecting the chiropractic profession to the kind of intense scrutiny that it cannot have experienced before), but it strikes me that what they are doing is a brilliant piece of community service. Already a whole swathe of chiropractic web-sites have been advised to withdraw claims<\/a> for treatment efficacy that they cannot justify with evidence.<\/p>\n

\tBut the impact of Twitter can be much wider. It seems to have played a vital role in allowing Iranians to tell the world about their experiences of the protests that have swept Tehran in this past week – providing an immediate and chaotic and visceral account of the unfolding events (and offering links to pictures and video). The hashtag #iranelection<\/a> has been one of the hottest on Twitter in recent days. And it works both ways – people from around the world have been retweeting the reports (to their followers) and<\/em> sending messages of support. For me this has been a totally new type of experience of dramatic events in a far off country. Somehow the BBC news, for all its quality, never provided such a direct connection.<\/p>\n

\tOn a lighter, but still democratic note, an online poll by the right-wing Daily Mail which asked the typically loaded question “Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue” prompted the Twitter community to get organised. I saw tweet after tweet urging people to vote ‘Yes’, voted myself and re-tweeted. The poll, which delivered an astounding 93% ‘Yes’ vote was removed<\/a> from the newspaper’s website. Perhaps because they were astonished by their readers’ liberal views\"\"<\/p>\n

\tOther campaigns have worked less well and perhaps show up the limitations of micro-blogging. Last week was official “Homeopathy Awareness Week” and, if you followed the #homeopathy tag, you would have seen comments from both sides of the debate about this unscientific mumbo-jumbo. But there was no real engagement. I found myelf resorting to wise-cracking: “Homeopathy awareness. Careful: risk of drowning<\/em>“. In retrospect I’m not especially proud of this.<\/p>\n

\tAnd then of course there is the whole lighter side of Twitter – the endless nonsense and puffery. Some of it is sublime, (some not so). Through Twitter I first heard about Robert Llewelleyn’s wonderful Carpool<\/a> video podcast. Then there was a heads-up about the man who tried to pay his bills with a drawing of a spider<\/a> – utterly wacky (this<\/a> is even wackier). I am now also subscribing to the Nature news @ApolloPlus40<\/a> which is aiming to twitter “the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened \u2014 40 years on”. I’m a sucker for “that kind of thing”:http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/scurry\/blog\/2008\/12\/28\/imagine-there\u2019s-no-earth.<\/p>\n

\tAnd last week during the tube strike I gave in to one of the more narcissistic aspect of Twitter and micro-blogged my walk from Victoria to South Kensington.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\nHarvey Nichols in Knightsbridge: Yes, we do have bananas.<\/em>
\n <\/p>\n

\tNot sure if anyone was watching though.<\/p>\n

\tBut. And it’s quite a bit but. It may be only micro-blogging, 140 characters at a time, short and sweet, crisp and to the point. But it’s highly addictive and it does suck up a hell of a lot of time.<\/p>\n

\tIn the morning before I even get out of bed I find myself checking up on the latest tweets from the people I follow. At work, between tasks, I have caught myself just having a quick look to see what’s going on. And then getting diverted. Often tweets provide links to web-sites that you end up following. Few people can construct an interesting narrative from just the 140 characters so many emissions are simply links to other material.<\/p>\n

\tIt’s a rich, rich source of information and interaction. But it’s doing my head in. That’s why Jim Hendler’s blog post<\/a> last Friday hit home so well. His piece is about finding the time to blog, which itself is an issue for me. But if I add to that the distraction of Twitter, the problem is compounded. I keep thinking back to Richard Hamming’s remarks<\/a> about sustaining that 10% extra effort in your science so as to reap long-term benefits in progress and productivity. And I wonder if blogging and twittering has soaked up that time from my schedule. I think it might have.<\/p>\n

\tOh, look – Maxine’s tweeted<\/a>. Kthxbye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m guessing that pretty much everyone has mixed feelings about the micro-blogging service, Twitter. The ability to rapidly post ‘tweets’ of no more than 140 characters can easily be seen as both a blessing and a curse. I was certainly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}