I’d Rather Twitter Than Text
by Russell Shaw
There’s four general means I use to mobile message: text, IM, Twitter and mobile email.
Each has their advantages and disadvantages.
I like texting the least. The surcharges add up, and most carriers enforce a message size limit. How much can you say in 200 characters (about 35 words)?
I love IM, but not all IM programs talk to each other. Too many platforms and IM user names to keep on my cell.
I’m a frequent user of mobile email. Being a man of words, and also of mobility, I like the fact that I can operate in an environment without onerous maximum message sizes or per message surcharges. Send along an attachment? No problem. I can even access my standard “desktop” Comcast email. The PDA version of Mail2Web is great for that.
But for non-surcharged, platform-neutral, carrier-neutral blips of quick message text.
Twitter. Many of my colleagues are on it. I Twitter them, they answer in a jiff.
Yesterday, the usually technology hip X-chromosomal unit asked me, “what’s Twitter?”
I gave her the brief explanation. I would have transitioned into Messianic mode about Twitter, but I’m waiting for the right moment when her curiousity about Twitter is more than over-the-shoulder casual.
Now this is a lady who often texts her friends, and whose friends text her back.
You just wait. I’m going to turn her into a Twitter-holic.
