twitter vs identi.ca

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
> <rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
> > "Ralph A. Mack" <ralphmack at comcast.net> writes:
> > >
> > > One intriguing characteristic of short messages is that it forces
> > > non-live discussion into a give-and-take mode resembling live
> > > conversation ...
> >
> > So, in other words..., it's yet another IM system?
> 
>   No, it's not Instant.
> 
>   (ducking)

I guess that was supposed to be a joke, but it looks like you're
actually *right*....

I had forgotten this (maybe "blocked" or "repressed" would be a more
apropriate verb), but now I remember that a (non-technical) friend of
mine actually explained her use of *Twitter* in exactly those
terms--she said:

   I'm surprised *you* of all people don't use twitter.
   It's just like instant messenger, but not real-time.

At the time, it didn't any sense to me, so I just discarded that piece
of wisdom: all of the IM systems per se were already `not real-time'
for me, because I'm *connected all the time*.

I had (and have) been running curses-based IM-clients in a Screen
session on an SSH server for so many *years* that I forgot that most
people don't operate like that: they sign-on when they're at their
computer, sign-off when they get up to go do something else, and don't
have their scrollback or logs (if they even keep logs) available at
all times from all places.

But now, I think, I understand: an IM system that automatically keeps
track of your conversations for you in one place--so that they're
always available wherever you are; and that basically has an `IM
voicemail' (without the `voice', obviously...) is *awesome*.


And now I have an account on identi.ca: <http://identi.ca/rozzin>


I *still* don't get *Twitter*, though. I just can't make much sense
out of it: I find myself stepping into the middle of conversations,
and only the last phrase uttered is immediately visible. The
`scrollback' is *in the system*, but if I want to read it then I have
to *track it down* *phrase by phrase*, like:

    OK, I see he said this in reply to this other person.
    The last thing that the other person said was this,
    which was in reply to this third person.

... and that all just falls apart if any of the participants have since
moved on to *other* conversations:

    The last thing that this third person said was...
    part of a different conversation. FAIL.


Identi.ca looks pretty nice, though--there's an "in context" link that
I can follow to see an entire conversation-thread at once! And there
are actually *threads*! It actually *seems* a lot like a system that
I've wanted to develop for the past decade--if it really is, then I
suppose that I'm elated that someone else found a way to built it for me :)

It looks *sort-of* `like Twitter but less stupid', but really more
`like FaceBook but less insular and hostile and two-faced and creepy'.


Thanks to Ralph for helping me understand :)

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."