I’ve noticed this new thing I do.
Once upon a time if I was struggling with something tech-like I would go to Google and either find something useful or not. Alternatively I would open my msn or maybe my mobile and try and match a person to the problem.
These days I Twitter and, as if by magic, the answer appears!
And I find myself answering questions too, it’s not all take.
So, here is this piece of technology that allows you to mutter, sorry Twitter away to yourself and then the people you know step in when they think they can help. That’s nice. It’s like sitting in an open plan office and asking the whole room a question except that the room is much bigger and, the people you are asking are not wishing that they had put their headphones on or that their music was louder.
There are some things about this new world of ambient intimacy that I really enjoy. Especially as in offline land I am quite loud and wonder how often people wish they could switch off their alerts!
Yes, I too am guilty of using Twitter for tech support – but what I find really funny is the number of people who email me or direct message me after I’ve twittered a potentially silly question, asking me what the answer is! 🙂
It’s another great example of this idea that I came across at Reboot lately…. which was about why it is actually valuable to have these networks that we’re more or less constantly attached to. It’s the idea of being able to short circuit your way to information/contacts etc. that you need from your social network online. who will give you this information because you’ve given them stuff in the past, and the more of this sharing that goes on, the smarter the entire network becomes – which is good for everyone, and makes this networking time a good investment in future efficiency. I tried to write this up semi-coherently here.
Twitter as tech support… Yes. This is one direction. There is another direction. Strictly answering (from beginning) service http://www.askville.com slowly (actually not so slowly) became sort of answering/conversation service. People ask questions with only intention to talk to somebody/anybody about …. whatever you could imagine (tipical question “what do you have for dinner?” or similar). How it happened? Askville limited amount of answers, but same time added discussion to each question (discussion has no time/participation limits). So, discussion sometimes became old friends meeting place talking about something not related to question itself. Same time discussion is a palce for advises, opinions, arguments, etc., etc., etc. Recently Askville added Friends/Followers features. One more social network started.
I think both processes (Twitter –> Tech-support and Answering –> social network) are very natural. We all humans, we need both: usefulness and fun (I use “fun” as very broad therm here). Social network provides both same time. This is the value (one of “the values”).