[Air-L] twittering

[Gonzalo Bacigalupe]

> My first entry in this list... Joined AOIR recently and have been  
> enjoying the exhanges. In relation to the twitter conversation, I am  
> a bit surprised by it. My two cents:My first entry in this list...

In my two years of experience with Twitter, it appears to me that the  
question the creators of Twitter asked: what are you doing? is  
irrelevant. Communities of twittering are really co -constructing  
their questions and thus responding whatever is relevant to their  
communities. Most of the people I follow don't necessarily tell me  
what they are doing but may be what they care for, what they want  
others to act on, they are recommending something , the most  
interesting twitters are probably the scheduled dialogues among  
communities of twitters and/or conversations about themes on a regular  
scheduled basis.
In my experience, researchers who tare too certain or talk a lot about  
Twitter in definitive terms tend to be folks who are not very involved  
in the process. That is, it is an outside perspective (often along  
some fear) rather than a curious and ethnographic/caring perspective.  
I am not sure why this is such a pervasive reaction considering the  
tremendous impact  of these social technologies on how a large segment  
of people communicate. The backchannel communication is core these  
days in many situations, to ironize the 140 characters seems too  
simplistic. May be I am missing the point here and it is not that I  
cannot laugh at a joke but it seems the jokes hide something else.