Posted by 10derHeart on June 25, 2009, at 18:08:07
In reply to Re: from babble to twitter, posted by Dinah on June 25, 2009, at 16:25:51
Good thoughts/questions.
Well, he's included a link back to the entire post, so at least someone at first reading only the excerpt in the tweet can click on it and be taken back to the post itself. Which I would imagine is the "goal" - a new, fresh way to get people to Babble? Perhaps they would be intrigued and read the post, then the thread then the board and....?
I dunno. Seems to me, depending on the nature of an excerpt, to someone not already a Babbler, it might make little sense. Hard to say. If they read the description in the upper right corner:
"BIO: the large public online mental health support group founded by @dr_bob in 1998"
and it was of interest, maybe they would click on the link. I'm no expert in online and/or social networking behavior, though, so I'm just thinking out loud.
My church and pastor use Twitter. I follow them. I find it useful, but not necessary. They always link back to anything - pics, videos, the pastor's latest blog - whatever, on the church website, which I already have a habit of checking several times a week anyway. Looking at it that way, going through Twitter just makes extra steps for me. I just checked it out when it was still novel, is all. I have an account but don't post tweets myself. I did a little, but was just talking to myself. No one I know Twitters, so who would be wanting to find out the Twitter premise about me: "What are you doing?" No one, in my case. I think you have to have pretty "connected" family, friends, work mates, in the sense they are on their computers, I-Phones, Blackberries and the like, the majority of their waking hours. I don't have that. Probably a good thing - as maybe I'd get obsessive like i do with email and Babble and check far too many times per day... I lack any sort of self-discipline about that :-(
It's makes me vaguely nervous, thinking of any parts of anything I posted on PB somehow being connected to me via someone reading a tweet Dr. Bob put out there. It seems a really remote possibility, though, first because Twitter is so astoundingly huge. I keep no secrets when it comes up that I suffer from some mental health concerns at times, have a therapist, etc (though I *totally* understand and respect others who do NOT share that info) but I don't then tell all about Babble, my posting name, and so forth. So, how would they stumble upon some excerpt from a post of mine on that account - unless they actively searched for mental health stuff?
Twitter does have a search function, but I'm unsure how sophisticated it is...so far I only used it once or twice, out of idle curiosity, to find celebrities (incredibly boring tweets/accounts, not to mention vulgar language) and one RL person who mentioned they had an account under their actual spelling of their name (it failed to find that one) I suppose maybe...but then a link to someone named 10derHeart would be utterly meaningless, unless they had the extraordinary luck to read a post where I mentioned something *so* distinctive they just knew it had to be me... A long, looooong shot. I've never told anyone, outside of my fellow deputies, and a couple other Babblers over the years (not even my T.) that name connected to my actual name. Yet, I still do like the idea I can distance myself from groups or people who either would never be interested in MH-anything, or aren't computer literate enough (yet) or whatever. Maybe they ought to get to know me IRL first, before reading things and misunderstanding the stuff that is written about candidly on PB, you know? Every weaving together of more social networking sites into Babble makes that "feel" more difficult.
But, I may be way off base. Feelings aren't facts.
poster:10derHeart
thread:903108
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090529/msgs/903172.html