We do need to meet up, hopefulyl that will happen soon. I’m not anti Twitter you understand, I just think it’s not a force for good necessarily, rather it’s a tool and it’s up to us to help define it’s uses.

Re wildlife being dug up or ’stolen’, you say “I’ve heard reports of this type of “theft” happening a lot recently.” Would be very interested to know more about this, I’ve often heard the fear expressed that wildlife can be damaged by letting out information about it, but so far I’ve found precious few examples where this has actually happened.

On the other hand, letting people know where rare species are can help get support for protecting them.

Interesting area, would be good to have more evidence on both sides of the argument.

Martin

- Yes I think I’m on the cusp!

I would be very careful of the pitfall of extending ones singular experience to all; there are more varied uses of Twitter than we can see as individuals. But I do agree with the lack of desire to conference tweet beyond sharing a few URL links/highlights. Running repeated tweets are annoying (but again, that is my singular experience).

Laura – Yes, I think my use is too sporadic yet, once I get into it more I’m sure I’ll get addicted.

Juliette – That’s a useful distinction. For example I find this commenting system (in WordPress) only slightly useful as a way to share because the discussions quickly fizzle out (which is OK I guess as they are not meant to be a full blown debate) but using twitter these types of short exchanges can happen very easily. I find my twitter/facebook presence integration useful and I do use facebook regularly.

Martin
1. A comfort and also a threat if abused. I see it as another method of communicating.

2. Ahh. Well according to my colleague (who will remain nameless) it was on display,but perhaps the story has been exaggerated a little by him. You’ve got my point though and that’s it is an open book. My life isn’t always like that and you know because of the review that we’ve had to be circumspect in what we say on blogs and twitter. I would prefer it otherwise in an ideal world but we haven’t got that luxury yet. Perhaps we never will. I’d like to use blogs and twitter to, for example,brainstorm a reorganisation process and structuring. I think it could be very useful but it would be totally public and open that it would throw the fear of god into senior management and probably not be considered very interesting to the rest of the public. I do think though these new methods of communicating should be used more widely for big complex group problem solving.

3. Nope. It a bit like road rage and phone rage an unfortunate side affect of the way technology has changed our lives.

I feel like you’re the manifestation of the twitter society so my apologies for picking on you Martin. I see the homeworking thing, and Niki who also is at home alot uses forums to keep in touch with her network of horsey friends.

In summary I’m just a bit rubbish at it so far and I need some time to set up twitter the way I want it and to get using it properly. I reckon I’ll become a convert within three months. One question – do any of you guys have “twitter down time?” – i.e. an enforced absence? – Matt Riddle (sp) when he was at CARET did some experimentation on the affects of forcing people away from online networks and the results were very interesting. People paced around rooms, became agitated, felt time was running slowly etc. Watch out for his paper on this (it may be out by now I haven’t checked).

As for being addicted to Twittercrack – maybe, but then I work at home, so it eats up less time than having a lunch and coffee with people everyday, and it makes me feel connected to the workplace. I fully accept that today it’s Twitter and tomorrow it’s something else, but what all of these do is build on the network, and I may be addicted to that.

I wonder if I’m a twitter addict. I became a great fan of Facebook statuses originally. I RSS fed them to my google sidebar so I could see them as they were updated. I think this has transferred to twitter because I find it gives me a wider perspective that FB where only my “friends” were represented. Initially I found it rather odd to have total strangers start to follow me on Twitter. But then somebody pointed out that this was no different to strangers following my blog entries, except that I could see who they were. I’ve found that often these strangers are interesting – often from other countries, sometimes with websites or blogs that are worth following.

I like having some of the tweets sent through to my mobile device. Gives me something to read and smile at in a waiting room or on a bus or train.

For me twitter is two things. One is a nice way to keep up with people I know. Another is to have a small level of contact with people I don’t know.

So am I a twitter addict ?