leakage

I've been re-reading Leisa Reichelt's fantastic thoughts on Ambient Intimacy and it reminded of one of the things I really like about twitter, which I don't think you get anywhere else, and I'd call it intimacy leakage if that didn't sound so yucky.

It's the phenomenon you get when someone using twitter on the phone accidentally sends a text meant for someone particular to all their twitter friends, normally shortly followed by the twitter equivalent of an apologetic cough. It's hardly ever anything very embarrassing or revealing, it's almost always something quite sweet. But I like the way you get a little innocent glimpse of another side of someone.

You don't get people accidentally blogging in the same way, blogging's too considered and its off in a separate space on its own. I guess that's part of why twitter works, it smoothly integrates into the fabric of our existing digital lives. Or something.

I guess I'm just pre-apologising for the moment I send an embarrassing text to twitter. Ahem.

Comments

[Rob Mosley]

I guess - given the way most mobiles work - these are mostly intended for people whose names begin with T? So all the Tanyas, Tonys and Terrys of the world are more likely to have their intimates leaked.

(Definitely too yucky used that way!)

[David Stone]

@Rob Mosley: not at all. I'm so in the habit of using Twitter as my default communication platform that it's habit to always select it now.

[bg]

Hmmmm. I found twitter to be far more considered than blogging. Some people will put down the who, why, what of their day “I’m at the airport, I’m in the bar, etc.” Others are forcing it, sorry to say. They’re trying way too hard to be the poet they’re not—in 140 characters or less–by coming up with the most profound statements and musings on life they can think of.

Ya know, sometimes, a traffic light is just a traffic light and really no more profound than that.

[dan burgess]

or a 'twatter' after i sent a 'hey how are you?' plus kiss for my wife to my twitter friends

[Tom]

'...creating a sense of presence in other peoples lives without needing to talk or be physically present.'

From the ethnographic research quoted in that article.

This stands out for me as being something very important - a piece of insight you would call it.

Works in love as well as advertising.