My week on Twitter - the #Brexit edition

Going. Going. Gone.

I remember when selling your underwear online was restricted to, how shall we put this, the more exotic corners of the interweb. And largely anonymous.

Not, it seems, any more. The lovely Russell Tovey, star of Being Human, is taking part in the Twit Relief auction and is offering a pair of his pants, socks and ta our of the set. Should you want to bid, you can do so here. At time of writing, though, the going price was £1,060 so you'll have to dig deep!

A whole host of celebrities are taking part by offering "Superfollows" on Twitter as well as more conventional charity auction prizes to winning bidders - whether that be a "Meet and Greet" with Davina McCall, tickets to the premiere of the last Harry Potter film courtesy of Edith Bowman, or the Inbetweener's Car.

You can see all the offerings on the Twit Relief eBay pages and you can donate here. In the meantime, here's Mr Tovey (almost) touting his wares:

Andrew

My Twitter Papers

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Twitter is great.

One of the best things about it is using links from people I follow to discover new blogs, stories, pictures and videos I would not have found otherwise. As these have been recommended by people I’ve chosen to follow, they tend to be more focused than “Stumble Upon” recommendations are. They also tend to be new and current as opposed to those things that have been round the internet block once too often.

But the immediacy of Twitter is also its biggest drawback – what about the hundreds of tweets I miss when not online? Dozens of interesting links that just go a-begging – never to be seen by me, never to enrich my life, engage my mind or, occasionally, enrage me?

paper.li is a neat tool which brings together links from the people you follow into an electronic paper format – allowing you to browse items you might otherwise have missed.

I’ve had a bit of an experiment and produced a couple of papers – have a browse and see what you think:

• The Andrew Brown daily
• The politics daily

They'll be automatically updated daily too, so if you like them, check back! If you use Twitter, why not create your own and see what you have been missing.

Andrew

Twitter Ye Not*

A few years ago, MySpace was the in thing and I, like many of my friends, had profiles there. In more recent years Facebook has come to dominate the "Social Networking" scene. In the past year or so, Twitter has come along.

Twitter hasn't, however, been adopted in quite the same way. Indeed, I have many friends who just don't understand it. Statistics indicate that many people sign up but don't utilise it much beyond the first month. They also suggest that a small minority is responsible for the majority of twitter traffic. Obviously it's not for everyone but why do some many people seem not to get on with it?

I think the first mistake many people make is to classify it as a Social Networking site. While it can be used as that, it isn't at its core. It is, rather, a micro-blogging site. It is easy to describe - and dismiss - micro-blogging as being essentially a long list of Facebook style status comments. This shorthand sells it short though, many posts are witty, and crafted to make best use of the 140 characters available.

Another advantage over Facebook is that it's not necessarily reciprocal: I can follow friends and they can follow me but I can also follow, for example, Stephen Fry, who famously is a prolific tweeter with a huge following. He couldn't be expected to link to everyone who's linked to him, but we can see what he's posted nonetheless. Likewise you can message people without being linked to them!

The written word, particularly the compressed and instant form that the format imposes exposes a different side to people. I'm not, for example, the world's largest fan of Jonathan Ross or Jimmy Carr, but I enjoy their tweets. It has made me respect them more than I may have done previously.

I can use it as an RSS-style feed: the BBC, Sky News and Sky Sports News all post links to stories on their websites.

While it's not specifically about "networking", tweeting can be a collective experience too - recently I've been enjoying Big Brother with live tweets from Davina McCall as she watches the evening show too, for example.

Contrary to popular thought, it's not all "I've made a Sandwich" or "I'm going to bed" - although occasionally such messages do appear!

There are drawbacks - various spam engines have latched on and you can get followed by links to porn sites. Tweets can be ghostwritten by publicity and commercial teams rather than famous individuals - Dolly Parton's tweets are an example of this, which is particularly disappointing as I think she'd be a great Tweeter. The site itself doesn't have the best layout, but this can be sorted through using another service such as Tweetdeck.

So while it may not be for everyone, Twitter does have a lot to offer, which may not be immediately obvious!

Andrew

(*Apologies to the late Frankie Howerd)