There was some discussion/conversations today about twitter and pownce. If you’re not familiar with either, here’s a quick description. Twitter is really micro-blogging: in 140 characters or less, answer the question “What are you doing?”. That’s the premise, but it has become much more than that. You can follow certain people and they follow you. It gives you the ability to tell a lot of people – all at once – exactly what you’re doing, thinking, or planning. It’s a great little tool. Pownce is very similar, but also gives you the ability to send files and links while allowing you to organize people into groups. Pownce also allows more than 140 characters which provides a little more flexibility.
When I started using twitter, I thought that it felt ‘arrogant’ and that I would never use it. I couldn’t understand why it was important for me to tell anyone else what I was doing.. it felt almost like shameless self-promotion to me. I signed up and then posted nothing at all except for one comment that I later took down. After a few months, more and more people that I knew were using it and so I signed up with another account and decided to give it another shot. I use twitter a lot now and I’ve found it really helpful for a lot of reasons. The main reason for me to use twitter is really just to keep up on what ‘leaders’ in certain fields are doing. Seeing them post about what they’re using, or talking about helps me to know what to keep an eye out for and what might be the ‘next big thing’. It makes my job easier. Twitter also allows me to keep people up-to-date on what I’m doing on a certain day or where they might be able to find me, and gives me the opportunity to have discussions with several people at once.
The discussion today started with someone asking (on twitter, mind you) for people to come “play with him” on pownce. Those of us following that person immediately ‘friended’ him on pownce and the conversation began. From what I could see, everyone in the discussion really felt that pownce was a ‘better’ tool than twitter simply because you can send files and links, organize into groups and easily follow conversations because all replies to a specific post are threaded. Pownce is good and has potential to really be a useful tool.
Some comments were then posted on twitter regarding pownce and that it seemed to be a good tool, and to my surprise those comments were met with an almost hostility from others on twitter in some sort of territorial defensive way. It was as though making a comment about the benefits of a different tool somehow offended users of the other. It was an interesting discourse.
I do wonder, though, with all of the social networking sites and tools out there, how do we truly decide which is best for us? Is it the one that provides the most features (like pownce) or the one that has the largest community and therefore the most interaction between people (twitter – at least for now). And when the next one comes along.. then what? Do we leave the other sites and flock to that one or do we continue to spread ourselves even thinner by staying involved in all of these communities just so we’re sure that we’re not missing anyone.
4 responses so far ↓
Biff // March 5, 2008 at 2:55 pm |
Hey Shannon,
That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot over the last year while we’ve been developing Naked. And, now that I’m demo-ing it for people in private beta, a lot of people ask me “Why should I use this and not that.”
The answer for me personally is that you shouldn’t. What we should be doing is realising what certain things are good for, what their use really is to us. The value of that use will then determine where that tool sits in our lives.
In my experience Myspace was social and it is now the place to go and stream tracks (or entire albums in exclusive cases).
Facebook took over from Myspace as being social, but then became more a place to get in touch wiht my past rather than share my present, or arrange my future.
Twitter, like you say, is a great way of listening in. It’s kind of like text radio. There was an earthquake in England last week and Twitter said it before the BBC did.
Pownce didn’t stick for me…but I might go and check it out again, see what’s been happening.
But yeah, I think we decide what’s best by trial and error…with a good helping of instinct.
~biff~
micala // March 5, 2008 at 3:05 pm |
Hi Biff..
I completely agree with what you’re saying here. With so many (understatement) social networking sites/tools to choose from it really does come down to what’s better for what you want to do, and what is everyone else using.
Although it’s nice to live in this dream world thinking that everyone would use the same thing, it’s certainly not going to happen anytime soon so we need to do exactly what you’re saying here. Play around, see what you like, and then figure out how it might work for you.
Cole // March 12, 2008 at 12:02 am |
So I am also working to deal with the new sense of arrogance in the edublogging space I have been seeing lately — that whole perspective is very disconcerting to me. In my mind the idea behind our role as educational technologists is to explore and discover new tools that can help people shift and shape the kinds of things they are doing in and out of their classrooms. One thing that blows my mind is that people who I look to for guidance in this space are almost lost in their use of specific tools — almost forgetting one of our primary responsibilities is around the notion of discoverability of new and engaging opportunities. If we don’t participate in new environments how in the world are we supposed to inspire new users to think of novel ways to attack challenges. If I get hung up on one thing for too long it means I am ignoring new potential.
Maybe it is just me, but the pownce v twitter experience you are describing (I think I am the someone who asked people to join) has me more focused on the core ideals of my professional space — exploring to explore … not getting married to a single approach and working to be constantly thinking about how can we be part of the solution and not just another voice in a holy war protecting a single tool (perspective, approach, whatever). Does that make any sense?
micala // March 12, 2008 at 12:08 am |
It makes perfect sense, Cole. My job at Penn State is to constantly learn/try/experiment with these new sorts of tools to figure out what might be useful to us and why – so I absolutely agree with you.
I do wonder though, if some people defend their ‘tools’ in the ways we’ve seen because it’s becoming more and more difficult to do exactly what we’re doing and keep trying new things and be ‘everywhere’ to learn what truly is our best option and see what we can learn from a new technology. I think it almost hints at the idea you were talking about in your blog post. I wonder if people are tired of ‘recreating’ themselves on every different site and wouldn’t be more willing to grow, learn, and experiment if the tool was the focus and not the recreation of the identity, and pulling people along with you for the exploration.