Although about as technologically gifted as a gorilla’s bum, The Leither (a local magazine I occasionally contribute to- if only in loud hand gestures and stilted opinions) has signed up to Twitter this month. This is a piece I wrote to celebrate this move. Although technologically akin to turning up late to a student party with three empty bottles of blue nun in a ragged paper bag we’re tweeting…

twitter is the latest online service to be hyped to such a lofty a lofty degree, in a rash of himalayic superlatives, that you could be forgiven for thinking it offers a cure to swine flu, a solution to toxic debt, or the answer to life’s persistent questions. it does not.

twitter (once you’ve signed up at twitter.com) lets you share a few choice words with friends. think: “anyone fancy a film tonight?” don’t think:
“anyone fancy a beer with the editor?” your message is limited to no more than 140 characters known as a ‘tweet’.
tweets can be trivial “i’m at the beach, mmh Seafeild”, or it could be a link to an article you’re reading, a photo of your new puppy. simple stuff you’d like to share. once logged in you can find and add friends near and far (you can choose to ‘follow’ bands, there’s a few celebrities on there… @BarackObama) their tweets will appear on your homepage where you can reply to messages or just keep an eye on what’s happening. friends can choose to follow you by searching your name or through invitation. by connecting with these other twitter users you create a global conversation, accessed easily through your phone, IM, mobile browser, or old- fashioned web. at home at work at play.

true, it’s pretty tough to compress anything of importance into what is essentially a frantic haiku (a complication shared by articles here in the leither). for example, here’s a decade of good web practice compressed into a tweet for you:

don’t click the ads. would the bank really e-mail and ask for your password? try googling it. its probably the hard drive. buy a mac.

today we’re communicating online in a multitude of ways. last month Ning.com, who create social-networks, announced its millionth network. many will place twitter in that social-network crowd along with facebook, bebo, myspace, flickr etc… but i can’t help thinking twitter is different, it belongs in a ‘real world’ list, along with phone calls and post-it notes. just think of twitter as text messaging+

“what are you doing?” is one of the most commonly asked questions in the world and it’s the unwritten opening line of any tweet. a starting point. where facebook et al. seem to be event driven, twitter focuses on that simple query, “what are you doing?” if the answer is, “i’m baking muffins,” you’ll wonder whether that’s relevant to the world. it’s probably not so, ordinarily, you wouldn’t call your mates to share the news. but if you tweet it i.e. throw it out there, well, maybe that mate… the one who makes terrific muffins (a shared interest you previously knew nothing about) just maybe they’ll tweet back and you’ll cut out the milk, use yogurt instead, and throw some rhubarb in there. (thanks @clairemurray)

silly example, but who knew i had friends with muffin information? facebook, and the rest, share the fundamental goals of all social networks: new forms of communication that attract (then ensnare) people with similar interests into exchanging ideas and values. in my opinion, where twitter triumphs, is in the minutia that wouldn’t be considered worthy of the very selective profiles these networks cultivate. if jack can define himself within the ‘interests’ box on facebook or myspace then jack truly is a dull boy.

critics vilify twitter as simply ‘too much information’, but when used as a form of communication rather than self indulgence (“i’m at the beach, mmh Mauritius!”) it can become very handy – it doesn’t work when you play the stalker to every celebrity you care to spell, but between obama and muffin recipes lies a lifetime. so follow @TheLeither and let’s see if there’s some local story out there we can uncover, or at least offer a few choice words on.

you can read all aboutThe Leither on their new website at www.leithermagazine.com