Twitter: The Missing Messenger

I will admit, I never answer my cellphone. I'm all for communication, but if I'm out with someone, or working, or doing anything that requires my attention, I don't like how much an unexpected call takes me away from what I'm focused on. I'm apt to try all manner of communication technologies - always hoping something will simultaneously support my desire to stay in touch with people I like, and not to be distracted. Tall order, I know. But it was with such optimism that I signed up for Twitter, a new messaging platform by Obvious, whose founders created some of the original blogging technology, and more recently, Odeo.

Twitter is perhaps the best example of a new kind of blog that some are calling a "tumblelog." The tumblelog is a bit like the old link lists: quick one or two-line entries - sometimes just a picture. Twitter in specific allows you to post, through a variety of means (IM, phone, web), short messages meant to describe what you are doing at any given moment. By establishing contacts on the site, you can also get a collected list of what all of your friends are posting.

In addition to all the established channels for posting, Twitter's API's have also made it possible for others to create tools for posting. One tool that has done a lot to make Twitter flourish is called Twitterific, by IconFactory. Camping out quietly in the toolbar, Twitterific pops a small window up whenever someone in my Twitter contacts list has posted something new. Like Outlook, or any Growl-integrated product, the window fades out and I can go back to what I was doing without having to act on anything. All day, I get nice little messages like "Thinking of summer art retreats" and "Rhododendron extract is the answer."

Twitterific is an interesting solution for someone like me. It's basically blogging reduced to what the Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin referred to as "the phatic function. (see note below)" Like saying "what's up?" as you pass someone in the hall when you have no intention of finding out what is actually up, the phatic function is communication simply to indicate that communication can occur. It made me think of the light, low-content text message circles Mizuko Ito described existing among Japanese teens - it's not so important what gets said as that it's nice to stay in contact with people. These light exchanges typify the kind of communication that arises among people who are saturated with other forms of communication.

Is Twitter the future? Will it become the one address I use for hassle-free communication? Or is it, as one of my co-workers pithily put forth, merely "Dodgeball for people who don't go out." Ouch! You decide.