Speaking of Twitter, Atrios has an account now. That’ll teach him to slim down his prose.
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by Tim F| 40 Comments
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
Speaking of Twitter, Atrios has an account now. That’ll teach him to slim down his prose.
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comrade scott's agenda of rage
Heh indeedy.
Butch
Twitter and Facebook are two things I plan to resist forever. What a waste of time.
Crashman06
@Butch: Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I thought it was useless too, until I gave it a shot. It’s a very useful way to get small bits of news or interesting links immediately. Also a great way to follow your favorite authors/musicians/artists, and stay updated on their shows or releases.
Xanthippas
Which is why they’re perfect for the working man with internet access.
beltane
What’s up with Sully? He posts a picture of Levi Johnston as the face of the day, but not a word about the alleged Palin bombshell. I feel used.
Pigs & Spiders
Twitter’s one of those things that you have to embrace in order to get anything out of it. The internet used to be the same way, before Google came along and made everything accessible and relatively easy to find.
Trinity
I’ve been following Atrios on Twitter since the 2008 convention. He’s had that account forever.
PeakVT
Too bad Elton Beard disappeared. Twitter is the perfect medium for him.
DCPlod
@beltane: If I were Sully’s husband, I’d be getting a little worried about his obsession with Levi.
DCPlod
Atrios has been on Twitter for a long while now.
RedKitten
@Pigs & Spiders: I’m still not completely sold on Twitter. I have an account, but only use it in a half-assed sort of fashion.
Facebook, on the other hand, is an essential part of my life now. As an example, it got me back in touch with a friend from high school whose baby was due the same day as Sam. We now compare notes on a regular basis, reassuring each other that we’re not completely screwing up.
Max
@Crashman06: I agree. Twitter has become a real time news feed and breaks news quicker than the networks do.
Plus, it is a great way to get links to information and great blogs that I haven’t seen.
Jinchi
Don’t Atrios’s posts already qualify as Tweets?
Butch
I know I’m not the mainstream on this issue. I got rid of my cellphone a couple of months ago, too. I just don’t understand this thing about being plugged in and connected round the clock.
JenJen
Atrios’ feed is actually pretty awesome. As are the Media Matters crew feeds. I especially like @jamisonfoser.
Brian J
@beltane:
What alleged bombshell?
Crashman06
@Max: Right on.
It’s also great for real time sporting events. Load it up during football sunday and watch the instant recriminations and hyperbole fly!
jibeaux
@RedKitten:
I’m the same way, except for the baby thing (although if I’d had another boy I would’ve named him Sam, I’ve always liked that name). It’s been really nice to reconnect with (some) people, see their pictures, learn what they’re up to. I think of FB as more of a personal thing, and twitter as more impersonal, so in that way twitter is more duplicative of other stuff on the interwebs. But I might get more into the twitter if I get one a them iPhone apps, might make more of an effort. What else am I going to do, get work done?
Comrade javafascist
Twitter makes me laugh at least three times per day. That’s all the value I need from it. Everything else is bonus.
(@javamanphil if you are interested)
Pigs & Spiders
@RedKitten: Twitter is a firehose of information, the vast majority of which is crap, but if you carefully choose who you follow, and if you have a league of followers yourself, it becomes a useful tool. All the benefits of a hive mind without the annoying physiological repercussions!
Brian J
Facebook is a pretty good tool for staying in touch with people and sharing pictures and so forth. I’ve successfully resisted the urge to post something about myself every fifteen seconds, so if I check it at all, I stay on for five minutes at the end of the day or at the beginning of the next day and then I’m done. Then again, I haven’t used AIM or anything like it in years and can’t imagine actually doing so, so perhaps I just like spying on others.
I’m not on Twitter, mostly for the same reason I didn’t call home nearly as much as other people in college: not that much goes on in my life. It’s the same routine, day after day, and while there’s always a chance that something interesting will happen (or, in the case of calling home, I need something), the chances of that happening are small.
What I find more interesting are the plays to monetize these and other Internet ventures. How a service like Twitter will supposedly fetch $1 billion is beyond me, but I guess anything is possible. It just seems…a little stupid that there’s so much money chasing so few proven entities.
Max
@Crashman06: I hear my Buffalo Bills are going to be using Twitter to decide what plays to call this week.
@maxythedog
Persia
@DCPlod: Are you kidding? I bet he gets laid whenever he wants these days.
Scott H
Either one finds Twitter useful, or not. It works for me. Facebook seems a lot of clutter, but many family and friends are there. Posterous is just brilliant, more of a social media swiss army knife.
I do enjoy those professional writers who mock Twitter’s 140 character limit. Picasso made a single line do the work of art.
GReynoldsCT00
@RedKitten:
Agreed on FB. I resisted, then gave in. Started finding old friends (from Kindergarten even!) and people I used to work with. Since I’ve lived in a few states, it’s a great way to keep in touch with everyone.
Nicole
A few months back, the compulsion to tweet got a NY casting director in trouble.
Shinobi
I was on the pilot of facebook when it first started and was just for people at a few select colleges. It was very useful then for finding people in the same classes and such, but I don’t remember the whole status update thing being a big deal then. It was just a way to message people you vaguely knew.
It’s still useful now, but to quote a very ageist dbag guy I know “Facebook was so much better when only cool people were on it.”
Also, the new retweet thing on twitter sucks. Not that I have anything interesting to say, but yeah, sucks.
jenniebee
My TwitKit is open on a sidebar anytime my browser is open.
For me it’s almost a professional necessity, because a lot of SQL and Agile folks are on posting to each other all the time – I get a lot of great links that way to articles, etc, that help me in my job.
And if you aren’t on twitter, that means you’re missing The Bloggess’ tweets which border on psychotic, but in a good way.
Libby
@Shinobi: The new retweet thing does suck. Doesn’t much matter to me because I don’t use apps. Have always manually RT’ed but I’m hating the way they show other people’s RTs using the original poster’s avatar. Creeps me out to see people I didn’t follow show up in my stream. And it doesn’t feel secure to me. I’m paranoid about phishing schemes and I rarely click on a link from someone I don’t know. Even though it lists the person you follow underneath, just feel as secure as seeing their icon.
neff
I hate when I read an interesting Atrios deep thought and then I check the comments to see if anyone has any similar ideas but as usual his comments section is a bunch of FIRST POST and social chatter and nothing even remotely related to his post.
jayackroyd
It is very weird to see people who are active in blog comments dissing twitter. Twitter is essentially a massive comment thread filtered by poster.
Troll free!!
jayackroyd
@neff
Yep. Atrios has given me a copy of the keys. So I see that too. When there is an ongoing conversation, the posts just consist of clean paper to write comments on (“Sheets!”). I might post something I think is interesting or important, but the commenters are deeply into the best kind of porridge, and that carries over.
But that’s okay. This is really about communities, after all.
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: Agreed. I don’t use Twitter, but I am addicted to FB. I resisted joining FB for a long time because I knew I would get addicted. Which I did. It’s ok, though. I have one of the craziest walls around. All the freaks hang out there!
@jayackroyd: Well, except I can write as much as I want here. And, I find the blog format much friendlier to the eye than the Twitter format. And, frankly, I don’t want to put in the effort to use Twitter correctly or to its maximum advantage.
@neff: That’s why I stopped reading Atrios. I can’t stand the comment section, and I can find the other info elsewhere.
FlipYrWhig
How often does Atrios tweet “Open Thread” and “I Got Nothin'”?
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWig
The other posters also put up filler material at eschaton. I did myself this morning. Just as here, there is a real focus on the commenting community, some of whom are on dial up. Resetting the comment thread is the purpose, just as here.
FlipYrWhig
@ jay — It was supposed to be a Twitter joke. I get the purpose of moving the blog comments to a new thread, because otherwise they’d all be in the four digits.
AnotherBruce
@neff:
You’re right neff, I don’t comment there much anymore mainly because of what you mention. Not that it’s a bad community or there aren’t some great posters there, but the “first” posts and the insider stuff gets a little tiresome. Usually after a post gets 1/2 hour old, the subject is completely changed to something else and you can’t find anyone even interested in discussing the actual post.
jayackroyd
@AnotherBruce
When a comment thread DOES stay on topic, atriots note the rarity of that.
Karen Tumulty over at TIME’s Swampland checked in when I was first handed the keys. (I had been posting a lot of comments over there.) She said she would never claim about her commenters again, having seen the chaos that is an atrios comment thread.
jibeaux
@asiangrrlMN:
Following you now, I’m Jen. I tried to send a direct message to that effect, but turns out you have to be following me (I wouldn’t, honestly.)
AnotherBruce
@jayackroyd:
One thing I want to make clear. Atrios is a great blogger. In fact he was the first blogger I read and when I found him in 2002, I read him every day. I still do. Reading that blog at that time was like finding political oxygen. He put his finger on the problem (our “liberal” media) very early. He still is very sharp with his media criticism and he is still a must read for me.