i feel all a-twitter

well damn. it's finally happened. i've joined twitter.com.

this isn't really anything new for me. i've been in several groups on upoc.com for years and also on dodgeball.com. i'm rather well...versed?...no....acquainted?...sure...with SMS and i much prefer it over calling someone on the phone. you'd be surprised how much you can communicate in 160 characters.

160 characters is the normal SMS length from carriers. twitter allows 140 characters i believe in posts, while upoc allows 120 characters.

SMS is nice because it will work when you just have regular cell reception but not a data connection. which means it's accessible to a larger number of people more often.

on the groups i'm on at upoc.com most of them are simply alert groups, like news, astronomy, oddtodd, or sci-fi, but some of them are 'chat' groups. this is to say that, for example on skefnet, there are ~32 people around the USA who randomly tell eachother something, humorous, mundane, snarky, or just plain wierd, and people respond if they want and everyone knows what is being said. this is actually a great way to get useful information out, as long as you can condense it to a few msgs of 160 characters. ;) we've often passed along outtage information, phone troubleshooting instructions, upcoming events, etc to eachother. it's a different way to be connected to people you may never meet but having something in common with.

dodgeball.com is different in that it tries to be like a location aware buddy list. you send in a notification that you're at a certain location (called a venue) whose address you, or someone else, entered previously at the website. then if anyone you are connected to has checked in somewhere within 10 blocks and 2-3hrs of your location, you both get alerted that you're near eachother.
i'm sure this probably works great in larger cities where more people are actually using dodgeball, but i have to say, in DC its not great. there just aren't that many people who use it and the ones that do exist in isolated social pockets.
i think dodgeball would be alot better if it used GPS and existing buddy lists like in any of the IM services.

how twitter will be different from upoc i'm not exactly sure. i had signed up with a twitter account 1 to 1.5yrs ago and didn't think it was very impressive. i'll just have to see what i think of it now.