I have been playing around quite a bit lately with feeds and social networking. Twitter is one app I’ve come to really enjoy using, mostly because it appeals to my personal coda of less = more, e.g. one can do massively more if one does massively less in this new web 2.0 space. RIA (Rich Internet Applications) afford a great deal of usability, but the sheer numbers have a bit of a crippling effect on my personal productivity. I am also not interested in achieving a kind of notoriety in my online habits.
Twitter scratches me right where I itch. Its microformat limits the amount of time I can legitimately spend on it, and it has what Stephen Jay Gould might call a punctuated evolution to its information flow–because messages are limited to 140 characters, information is necessarily reduced to quanta. I like this because it forces me to rely on pure data to adequately convey my thoughts, actions, and intentions.
Which is what Twittering comes down to. And I see it can be used for numerous information outlets: advertising, blanket quick-info blasts, timeline-ing, recruitment, and assisting users. Earlier today, I purchased a domain on behalf of a Tweeter whom I’ve never met. That’s the kind of 2.0 interactivity and give-and-take that I want. Short form relationships, I think, are best in this environment.