Excuse the title.

Prem asked in the comments on my last post:

If Twitter kills the small-talk, then maybe that’s for the best. Get it out the way, in one go, in public… then, when meeting up with people, there’s a greater hope of cutting straight to the deeper issues of life. Do you find this happening?

First, small talk is necessary, as it sets down the groundwork for a more interesting conversation. Even a greeting is an example of small talk. In Mandarin, “Have you eaten?” is a common greeting, which is asked even if it’s not convenient for the host to serve food.

Second, I don’t believe undirected tweets count as a conversation. A tweet is something you publish for everyone to read. The tone might be conversational, eliciting advice, or imply participation, it is not directed specifically at you to solicit your esteemed personal response. You can follow someone’s tweet series about losing their dog and say nothing.

It reminds me of Big City Syndrome, where community spirit has diminished, and there’s always the assumption someone else will come to the assistance of the woman who just fell over and is struggling to get to her feet. There’s something lonely, even solipsistic, about Twitter.

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It’s worth noting that Twitter wasn’t designed to be a conversation platform. That’s shown in its lack of design support for conversations, and its lack of support for retweeting. It’s a publishing platform, not a platform for intimacy—though I’m grateful to still be in touch with people I no longer live in the same vicinity with, no matter how ambiently.

A personal frustration for me is that although you’re exposed to people’s lives, thoughts, and idiosyncrasies, there’s something glass-cage-like or zoo-like about it.  While I don’t agree with everything Archbishop Vincent Nichols says in his criticism of Facebook and social networking sites—or at least, how the BBC has portrayed it—I think there might be something in it.

Like I said, I’m sticking around on Twitter, but it’s fun to analyse the way we’re communicating and how it’s changing, even the negative side to it. I plan to carry on tweeting about my cats.

If you pay attention to someone’s tweets, you’ll learn an awful lot about them. Your mind hoards all these little facts, like where they get their coffee, what they thought of a film, and what they like doing.

Sadly, you no longer need to ask questions. Facebook has the same problem.

As Cennydd put it:

Apart from killing small talk, I’m tempted to delete my Twitter account for how much time I spend reading my feed when I could be reading—oh, I don’t know—Ulysses. Or about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I’d been ignorant about for so long. But I’m keeping Twitter around, for now.

Why I haven’t deleted my Twitter account yet.

Fear of Being Out of Touch

I’m frightened by the idea of not knowing what people are talking about. I realise this is an irrational fear, and I’ll still know what’s important from reading blogs. I realise I can simply subscribe to tweets without posting, but that’s out of the question, too; the urge to respond to a tweet, or update my followers with the latest disaster exploits of my new kittens, is astonishingly powerful.

The Need for Ambient Intimacy

Twitter’s a bit of a weird medium. Intimate, yet cold. There is a wall between you and your followers. There is no guarantee anyone following you will remain a follower: they’re fickle and will unfollow you if you post something annoying. In addition to that, even if they’re apparently following you, there’s no guarantee that someone’s even listening to your updates—maybe they’re following 20,000 people. Maybe you’re not on their priority list in TweetDeck.

I follow 188 accounts, some people, some RSS feeds, and I read all of them. I use it to stay in touch with my close friends, but I also have lots of acquaintances (but not BFFs) I want to stay in touch with. Twitter’s the perfect medium for it. This is not unrelated to the other reason I don’t delete my Twitter account: fear.

So I’m sticking around for now. Grudgingly.

I’ve adopted the philosophy that I’ll keep much in my life mysterious, unpublished on Twitter. There’s stuff you can only discover if you ask me questions, and even then, I may not answer. But at least it’ll be a semblance of a conversation, right? Plus, I’ll need to keep some stuff for my autobiography.

The other thing I resent Twitter for is how self-conscious I’ve become about writing. I apparently have several hundred people following my updates, with maybe 20% of them who are actually humanoid. And perhaps only half of the humanoid followers are actually listening. Even so, the number makes me anxious—and I resent that I care what listeners think about what I’m tweeting about lunch.

I often check Twitter on my iPhone. But instead of using one of the numerous Twitter clients from the app store, I’ll just load up mobile Twitter in Safari. Why don’t I use an app?

There are problems in every option available right now. In this post I’m going to comment on three iPhone Twitter experiences: mobile Twitter (m.twitter.com), and two popular apps, Tweetsville and Twitterrific.

Mobile Twitter (m.twitter.com)

Mobile Twitter, located at m.twitter.com, is the official mobile version of Twitter.com. It works fairly well as a mobile website, but it’s not iPhone optimized. The design doesn’t follow the iPhone human interface guidelines published by Apple. A few changes would improve things for iPhone users:

1. Tappable areas should be bigger. The “Older” and “Newer” links should be at least 44 x 44 (recommended by Apple).
2. The text entry box should be bigger. Falls into the above suggestion, but I think it’s so important it deserves its own mention. A bigger entry box would benefit all mobile users (the box should be a certain percentage of the screen). Right now it looks ridiculously small on iPhone, and it’s awkward to type an update into. Editing what you’ve written is a frustrating experience. This experience is so poor that I find I use m.twitter.com to read updates, but to actually send an update to Twitter, I use SMS.
3. It’d be nice to have a character counter. It’s essential, really: Twitter users need to know how much of their 140-character budget they’ve used and how much they’ve got left.

Third-party Twitter applications for iPhone: Twitterrific and Tweetsville

I’m going to compare Tweetsville and Twitterrific, which isn’t really fair, as I’m comparing the free edition of Twitterrific with a premium app, Tweetsville. But as far as I know, the user experience is the same; except the premium version doesn’t have ads, and it has the option to toggle a light background. Twitterrific is by Iconfactory, and has a free and premium version. Tweetsville is by Ed Voas, who sold the application to Tapulous. It’s a premium app with no free version.

Appearance. I’m not a fan of Twitterrific’s default appearance. The gradient background behind every single update is just something extra the app has to load, along with the text content. I don’t think it looks nice, either. Which, of course, is the real issue here. ; )

Seriously speaking, one of the things I like about Twitter is its simplicity, both in concept and visual design. Any extra graphic embellishment takes away from the simplicity and transparency. It’s worth noting that the desktop version of Twitter doesn’t even allow users to customise a background colour (the default is white). Any Twitter app should aim to load as quickly as possible, so being spare in appearance is a good thing.

Tweetsville’s appearance is simpler. It offers two display options (bubbles or no bubbles).  I think it fits better with the appearance of core iPhone apps, in both its visual design and interaction design.

Content concentration. How many updates can you cram into a single screen and is cramming content into the screen a good thing to aim for? Content in context is something designers should definitely take into consideration. Twiterrific appears to be able to fit more updates in a single screen when compared with Tweetsville, which would have the benefit of not having to scroll as much. Given the little work involved in scrolling, and how much you need to scroll anyway, perhaps it doesn’t make much of a difference. It also depends on how many people you’re following, and how much content you need to catch up on.

Tweetsville: (1) plain, (2) speech bubbles.

User experience. Tweetsville looks better than Twitterrific. Additionally, its user experience is better: it is more user-friendly, and more compliant with Apple’s human interface guidelines for iPhone, and this is shown best on the settings screens below.

Tweetsville’s settings vs. Twitterrific’s settings.

Tweetsville’s settings fills a single screen. Twitterrific’s settings fills roughly three screens. The latter offers too many options, and not all are necessary. Is the ‘Light Background’ button totally necessary in the free edition? It mainly serves as an ad for the premium edition. How come Tweetsville gets away with so few settings options?

User control: tab bar. Another good thing about the design of Tweetsville is the presence of the tab bar. The tab bar on the bottom of the screen acts like a useful frame, giving the user more freedom over where they can move within the application.

The tab bar is a great asset. Even better is the ability to edit them (which you can do, surprise surprise, by hitting “edit” on the “more” screen). This works like the tabs in the iPhone’s iPod, which draws on an established affordance (good).

Tweetsville’s custom tab bar

Progress/status bars vs spinners. When I refresh the app I want to know how quickly I’ll be able to read new updates. So I want to see a visual indication of progress.

The spinner (circled in red) doesn’t indicate its progress visually. It just tells me it’s working. Great, but how soon will I get to see my updates?!

The browser bar (also circled in red) fills up as it downloads data. It tells me that not only is something happening, it’s completing a task, and is at least a percentage through completing it.

I really like this and would love to see an app that could show this, even if it’s not accurate. Psychologically, it eases my pain by giving me the impression that something’s getting done!

While none of these experiences are perfect, the good thing about multiple options is that the designers behind them will learn from each other’s merits and mistakes and improve iteratively. Twitterrific was one of the first clients out there for iPhone and iPod touch, and Tweetsville is a fairly recent release, so the latter had more time to learn from existing apps on the market.

I hope that Twitter will make an iPhone optimized site according to Apple’s human interface guidelines, because I’d be happy to use the website. Twitter itself is extremely lightweight, so does it really need an app? Any app should reflect the lightweight nature of Twitter, and aim to keep loading time as low as possible.

Some personal milestones since moving to Brighton, in no particular order:

1. I live in Brighton.
Very fast and spontaneous decision. Zero regrets. It wasn’t easy, but I made it work: moving to a new city, jobless, and without ties or contacts, is something I thoroughly recommend.

2. Started, and actually maintained, this blog.
Scary, for lots of reasons. I’m Googleable. I’m making my thoughts tangible. Blogging has helped me to understand my job better, and it’s helped me to understand the whole industry better. Thinking, understanding, writing, sharing are all good things. I would encourage every single person to have a blog, if you can read, write, and have a brain. Just make a Wordpress blog and start writing about something that interests you. While I’m at it, I’d encourage you to use Twitter as well. Life is fleeting. Publish!!

3. Got a job doing something I love and am genuinely interested in.
Really glad I’m no longer in the shoes I was, post-graduating: flung out into the real world clutching a bit of paper. I was lucky to fall on my feet and figure things out.

4. Met some great people.
This isn’t really an ‘accomplishment’, but luck, and a side-effect of living here. Brighton is teeming with quite a number of smart, talented, inspired, inspiring, passionate people. It’s helped me to understand how important it is not to be an island, but to be part of a community. Islands don’t develop, they just get smaller. Great people help you grow.

5. Attended a BarCamp and actually did public speaking.
Kind of a big thing, for a girl who contemplated breaking her own leg to get out of it at school.

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Some future goals:

1. Write more and write better.
But at the same time, relax about writing: I think I automatically slip into a formal essay style, which actually constrains directions I want to go.

2. Do more public speaking (BarCamps)
And become more confident about it. My first BarCamp was pretty much baptism by fire, as James Aylett put it: my audience included someone involved with BarCamp’s founding, and several other muses.

The best way to think about BarCamp is giving back: sharing what you know, in exchange for learning more about what other people know.

Ah yes, and not entirely unrelated to the rest of this post: I’m going to SXSW Interactive (March 13–19th) in Austin in 2009, and can’t wait to catch up with the great people I met at dConstruct and at Nokia Open Lab.