A bit of a stretch, you say, for finding knowledge?
Not so, according to a recent CIO article about Twitter
titled "Twitter's Potential for Business Users." Forget blogging,
forget instant messaging--those last-century technologies can't come close to
the pervasiveness of Twitter's always on (if you want), always with you (are
you ever really far from your cell phone?), always dynamic environment where friends and strangers can keep you constantly up-to-date on their goings
on. Like being a voyeur? Twitter lets you take a peek inside the worlds of
thousands of fellow twitterers--albeit only in 140-character tweets.So what does all that have to do with expertise
location? Everything. Why even worry about something as passive as presence
indication when you know others are out there actively following your every
activity? Maybe even anxiously awaiting your next microblogging update? So
what's to stop you from asking a question instead of reporting your latest
thoughts? Nothing. There's the connection! Could this be the ultimate in open
source collaboration?
Want to help me figure it out? Find me at KM_dude.
Another emerging business use for Twitter involves communicating at professional conferences. In her blog “The Social Organization,” Rachel Happe writes about how Twitter has enriched her experience attending conferences: http://www.thesocialorganization.com/2008/06/twitters-transformative-effect-on-conferences.html
Thanks for the interesting post and provocative link, Jim.
Yes, I think "Wearable Expertise Location" is a BIG stretch for twitter now that I have read the CIO article and the one Lauren suggested (plus some others I will mention below). I would suggest that "Wearable Activity Identification" is more apropos since Twitter (I am a non-user myself, too many chances to fall into a dry dock or have something heavy drop on my head if I were to walk around the shipyard "twit'ing") excels at asking "What are you doing?" and you get 140 characters to answer.
While I value the fact that it forces succinctness on transmitters (140 characters are good enough for about 18-22 average words, nothing technical), I find it amusing that some people prefer its brief sound bites a relief from the "noise" of email, then describe their use in terms that sound like they are channel surfing a 500 channel cable system.
Sure, I agree that there could be a role for Twitter for specific types of communication such as broadcasts and disaster notifications, but I have trained myself to provide such info to my superiors via a single Blackberry screen and use of a Twitter like opening that we in the Navy refer to as a Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). I insist that skill be practiced widely within my command as well.
In "The Business Value of Twitter,"
http://advice.cio.com/abbie_lundberg/the_business_value_of_twitter
Abbie Lunberg pretty much sums it up, albeit unintentionally, when she writes that Twitter is "an online spewing of inconsequential details by self-absorbed people with too much time on their hands," especially when she goes on to write that what caught her interest was photojournalist who tweets while on assignment ("I felt like I was with him on his last trip to Africa") and an author who tweeted from Oprah's "green room" before appearing on the show to talk about her book on Budhism. Would I have been more impressed if Nassim Taleb (of "Black Swan" fame) had been doing the "tweeting" (although I think "twitting is more descriptive)? Not likely.
Since I am "into fully articulated thoughts," Twitter may not be for me. Yes, I am sure it does have uses for "quickly and simply aggregat[ing] immediate information ... [via] random collection[s] of thought[s] [that are] easy ... to gather and easy for the contributors to give." For technical work, I have noticed that speed does not equal utility or accuracy most of the time.
Lauren's link to Rachel Happe's notes (much longer than a Twitter post) about how Twitter impacts her experience at conferences was also interesting (locating people near the Starbuck's was the only thing that struck me as useful), if uninspiring. I had to ask myself whether a more effective alternative to Rachel's use of Twitter to record her reactions to the speaker as a means of staying more engaged than mere listening would be to take notes (especially if you wanted to share them later)? I would find it hard to listen to the speaker and later share key points the speaker made if I was spending much time "add[ing] my perspective" either via a cell phone to Twitter or talking to my neighbor.
I once attended a conference where each place at the main table had a computer you could use to ask questions or IM someone else at the table. That was useful because I could chat with someone else when the presenter was on slide 20 of 30 of a really poorly organized and barely relevant ppt show (Tuft might have rejoiced), but I sure was not listening very closely while I was doing that.
Here are some other Twitter links upon which I stumbled while following Jim's line of thinking:
How to "get" Twitter http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/006665.html
You have to wonder when tip number 7 is "do not let Twitter take over your life."
Twitter in plain English
http://www.yourdonreport.com/index.php/2008/03/06/twitter-in-plain-english/
The link has a 2.5 min animated intro to Twitter that I found far more useful for grasping what it is than any of the text based descriptions above.
Now that I have gotten *that* out of my system, perhaps Jim is right that Twitter could be used as an expertise locator. I guess it just depends on the expertise you are looking for and how well Twitter is organized to help you find it.
I need to correct an mistake I made in my comment. Abbie Lunberg did *not* write that Twitter is "an online spewing of inconsequential details by self-absorbed people with too much time on their hands." She only wrote that "other" people could describe it as such. I lean toward being one of those people, but I got a bit carried away by conveying the impression that Ms. Lunberg had that view. Sorry for the error.