Just read a most excellent article “These Foolish Things On Intimacy and Insignificance in Mobile Media” by Kate Crawford, which is forthcoming in Gerard Goggin & Larissa Hjort’s Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media. Basically Kate argues that a large part of Twitter’s appeal is the intimacy it provides. Allowing people to stay in touch and connected. That while it may look like an exchange of inanities—“I am eating bacon!” “I am getting on a bus.” “The cat just chundered.”—communities are being built and maintained.

Twitter has allowed me to have more of an idea of what a handful of my Australian friends are up to. Thus I have a new category of Oz friends I stay close to: in addition to my Oz friends who IM, I now have Oz friends who tweet.

I joined specifically to keep up with friends who are far away. But I will admit I was also curious about some of the celebrities on Twitter and initially followed many of my faves. And stopped following the majority really quickly. Except for Stephen Fry they were boring and/or self-involved. I’m not sure why I was surprised. Actors! Will I never learn? Well, okay, it wasn’t just actors who turned out to be deadly dull. There are some shockingly boring well-known comedians, writers, designers and artists. I won’t name them cause I’m not rude.1

It’s natural that most of the people I enjoy following are people I know well because it lends context and nuance to what they say. The other group I follow are people who are passionate about the same things I am passionate about books, YA, politics, weird stuff, zombies. So my choice of people to follow is not very different from the blogs I follow. And Twitter isn’t really that different from blogs, it’s just way more condensed.

1. On my blog. [↩]