Hello Twitter (G-d)...It's Me. I'm trapped at Club Deville in the rain
Looks like Twitter is becoming 'hot' again, as evidenced by several blog posts including one from fellow Yahoo, Greg Cohn [Twitter status: Having a drink downstairs in the hotel bar.] For the uninitiated, Twitter is like "Instant-messenger (IM) status" from wherever you are. You can update it from your cell phone, email or text-message and your friends will be alerted of your status...and you can even install a widget on your blog.
It got me to thinking that with the introduction of these types of tools that allow those not around us to "spy" on us via self-reporting status messages, we are in essence creating an all-knowing G-d. "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it...does it make a sound?"... If the tree has a Twitter account, it most certainly will make one.
By adopting the habit of "logging in" your location and activity, are you adding some morality system into your life that actually impacts what you're doing? If you had to log-in every time you did something...what activities would you forgo? G-d Twitter is watching.
UPDATE #1: I signed up on Twitter *after* I got back from SXSW. Hello? Anyone out there? Here I am.
UPDATE #2: San Francisco blogger and humorist Min Jung Kim wrote a Twitter haiku observing, "twitter defined as/turning bunches of geeks to/14 year old girls."
UPDATE #3: Leisa Reichelt coins the phrase, Ambient Intimacy to describe the value of Twitter and I like it. "Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with
a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have
access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible."
