Blog Archives
Geeks vs. Early Adopters on Twitter (and elsewhere)
Posted by Daniel Greene
In the month-or-so that I’ve been on Twitter, I’ve gotten the impression that a lot of people on it are geeks, a lot of them are early adopters, and a few are “regular folks.” And I wonder if some of the angst I’m feeling is that I’m more of an early adopter than a geek.
I define geeks as the people who create the latest technology and early adopters as the first people to use it. I have read geeks’ writings and conversed with them on the Internet, such when I participated in the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html in 1996. I learned HTML and CSS by reading, asking questions, and eventually answering questions. I became one of a handful of people in the world to publish a web page in HTML using CSS in August 1996. Yet I didn’t become a professional Web developer. I didn’t become a recognized “expert” in the field (unless you count being interviewed by Wired in 1998). Why? Because I’m not a geek. I don’t take well to sitting for hours in front of a computer screen hacking code. I don’t know any of the languages it takes to write CSS that can render properly in any web browser; i.e. I can’t use JavaScript to insert “browser-sniffing” code that delivers CSS written for each browser’s idiosyncratic (read “faulty” or “noncompliant”) way of rendering CSS… But I digress.
My point is: Read the rest of this entry →
Posted in Writing for the Web
Tags: communication, marketing, opinion, social media, Twitter
I thought I was a social outcast. Then I came to my senses.
Posted by Daniel Greene
This evening I had a brief bout of self-doubt, a fear of social ostracism. It began when I considered going to #evfn (East Valley Friday Nights), a Twitter gathering or “Tweetup” organized on Twitter and taking place, this night, in Chandler. Mind you, Chandler is pretty far from my home in Phoenix, and just last Friday night I passed on driving out to Paradise Valley to attend shabbat services because it was “too far.” So I was already questioning my motives. Why was I willing to consider driving out to Chandler to meet some “tweeple”? Could it be because I saw a tweet earlier today from Rene Gutel saying, “@evo_terra Mind if I join y’all?” (Rene Gutel is a local freelance journalist who often contributes stories to NPR, so I thought it would be neat to meet her.) Could it be because I see businesses bending over backward to support Tweetups in ways I’ve never seen them support Flickrmeets? (When local Twitter members went to a Phoenix Suns Game recently, they all got matching (free?) t-shirts and a welcome on the JumboTron. And at the #evfn Tweetup at Whole Foods in Chandler tonight, the store actually printed a gorgeous sign to welcome them.) Could it be the age-old yearning to hang out with “the cool kids”? Well, it could be any or all of those things. But something kept me from going… Read the rest of this entry →
Posted in Communications & Media
Tags: community, personal, pride, social media, Tweetup, Twitter
Twitter: Too much about too little
Posted by Daniel Greene
I’ve tried to like Twitter. Really, I have. And I haven’t given up on it entirely. But it just seems like too much about too little. My long-suffering not-as-technophilic-as-I-am husband took a look at the Twitter home page on my desktop the other day and said it looked like the stupidest bunch of nonsense he’d ever seen. And I can’t entirely disagree with him! It isn’t that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with Twitter; it’s just that I don’t like the current implementation of it. In this review of my two week’s time on Twitter so far, I’ll tell you what I didn’t like about my experience in Twitterville and what I would like to get out of it in the future.
For starters, I was disappointed to find that hardly anyone I know or care about following is actually on Twitter at this time. This experience was in sharp contrast to my entrée into the Facebook world, which was like showing up at a party where you expect to see the one person who invited you and instead you end up seeing almost everyone you’ve ever known. The lack of friends I know on Twitter was the first disappointment. Then there’s the fact that some of my friends who have Twitter accounts don’t even check them regularly enough to have update them or reciprocate my follow by following me.
Then there are the people on Twitter that I did know and have enjoyed “socializing” with on Flickr. Read the rest of this entry →
Posted in Writing for the Web
Tags: communication, opinion, review, social media, Twitter
