4 ms·

IM is always-on, and at my clients it seems to work. But broadcasting over IM doesn't work. It's the broadcast bit about twitter that worries me. Broadcast equ

by moe 18y ago

IM is always-on, and at my clients it seems to work. But broadcasting over IM doesn't work. It's the broadcast bit about twitter that worries me. Broadcast equals noise. Communication noise is very harmful. If you really value real-time updates about your peers then that should at least be limited to the stuff that can be relevant to you, e.g. to people that work on the same project as you. For this purpose a simple chat-room seems more than adequate. And that is supported by pretty much every IM service in existence. Without character limits. With seamless unicast.

tptacek 18y ago
Broadcasts limited to the stuff relevant to you seems like the entire Twitter problem statement. I think you're getting hung up on how Internet Twitter is used. Enterprise IM isn't used for picking up teenaged girls on Yahoo, either.
- moe 18y ago
  Broadcasts limited to the stuff relevant to you seems like the entire Twitter problem statement. Absolutely not. In twitter you follow people, which makes absolutely no sense in corporate context. Who am I supposed to follow, my project manager, all my co-workers? Am I supposed to change my followership for each project? What when I'm jumping between projects? As I see it the only meaningful messaging context in the corporate world is per-project or per-team. And nothing easier than starting a chatroom, campfire or similar for that. Or why exactly should Bob the programmer care what Sarah from accounting is working on if she's not part of his project or team?
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Yes, you follow your teammates (your dev team, your account team, your CSR shift manager), plus management up the chain to the CEO, plus facilities for your building, HR, and finally the hashtags for any project you may be a part of. I'm not sure I understand the disconnect here. Bob the programmer never sees what Sarah from accounting is working on, because why would Bob want to follow her? I don't see what you're typing on Twitter on the Internet for the same reason. Presumably, a good part of the opportunity in enterprise Twitter is in figuring out what the features are that helps mainstream users stay subscribed to the right feeds.
    - moe 18y ago
      Yes, you follow your teammates (your dev team, your account team, your CSR shift manager), plus management up the chain to the CEO, plus facilities for y our building, HR, and finally the hashtags for any project you may be a part of. Which is completely nonsensical. Why put that burden on the user when a simple chatroom serves the exact same purpose, with better scoping? Why would I want my CEOs messages intermixed with my project related chatter? Why should I receive messages for projects that I have nothing to do with only because one of my co-workers is involved with them? You'll probably say "then filter by hashtag". And I'll tell you: This is why many people consider twitter nothing more than a very poor re-implementation of existing chat technology. The hashtag emulates a chatroom (poorly) on top of a broadcast protocol. In fact the whole construct is so primitive and backwards than one has to wonder whether the twitter guys had ever looked at IRC, jabber or, well, anything, before they started their broken impl. What they did successfully was to make person-centric scopes (rooms) the default. This obviously has a lot of mass appeal due to the inherent psychological effects (cf. "why babies cry"). But again, I don't see how this has a place in any productive environment.
      - tptacek 18y ago
        Twitter isn't a chat system, even if people abuse it that way. If you want to continue casting the argument in terms of why Twitter is worse at group chat than IRC, I'll continue conceding that you're right about group chat and totally missing the point about Twitter. There is a difference between a status update (which people already organize their days around in big companies) and a chat message.
        moe 18y ago
        Twitter isn't a chat system, even if people abuse it that way. Interesting level of abuse then. Those hash-tags seem to be mighty popular, probably only topped by "replies". There is a difference between a status update (which people already organize their days around in big companies) and a chat message. And what would that be? Twitter presents your "status updates" in exactly the same way that chat clients present their chat messages. Okay it's crippled as in you are not supposed to reply - but people are obviously not using it that way. Furthermore you ignore the fact that nobody in your company has only a single, canonical status that could be summed up in 140 chars. Everybody is involved in multiple projects and teams, each of which has a different status. There is a reason why all ticket- and project-management systems are project centric and not people centric. It's because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't.

by moe 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago

Broadcasts limited to the stuff relevant to you seems like the entire Twitter problem statement. I think you're getting hung up on how Internet Twitter is used. Enterprise IM isn't used for picking up teenaged girls on Yahoo, either.

moe 18y ago
Broadcasts limited to the stuff relevant to you seems like the entire Twitter problem statement. Absolutely not. In twitter you follow people, which makes absolutely no sense in corporate context. Who am I supposed to follow, my project manager, all my co-workers? Am I supposed to change my followership for each project? What when I'm jumping between projects? As I see it the only meaningful messaging context in the corporate world is per-project or per-team. And nothing easier than starting a chatroom, campfire or similar for that. Or why exactly should Bob the programmer care what Sarah from accounting is working on if she's not part of his project or team?
- tptacek 18y ago
  Yes, you follow your teammates (your dev team, your account team, your CSR shift manager), plus management up the chain to the CEO, plus facilities for your building, HR, and finally the hashtags for any project you may be a part of. I'm not sure I understand the disconnect here. Bob the programmer never sees what Sarah from accounting is working on, because why would Bob want to follow her? I don't see what you're typing on Twitter on the Internet for the same reason. Presumably, a good part of the opportunity in enterprise Twitter is in figuring out what the features are that helps mainstream users stay subscribed to the right feeds.
  - moe 18y ago
    Yes, you follow your teammates (your dev team, your account team, your CSR shift manager), plus management up the chain to the CEO, plus facilities for y our building, HR, and finally the hashtags for any project you may be a part of. Which is completely nonsensical. Why put that burden on the user when a simple chatroom serves the exact same purpose, with better scoping? Why would I want my CEOs messages intermixed with my project related chatter? Why should I receive messages for projects that I have nothing to do with only because one of my co-workers is involved with them? You'll probably say "then filter by hashtag". And I'll tell you: This is why many people consider twitter nothing more than a very poor re-implementation of existing chat technology. The hashtag emulates a chatroom (poorly) on top of a broadcast protocol. In fact the whole construct is so primitive and backwards than one has to wonder whether the twitter guys had ever looked at IRC, jabber or, well, anything, before they started their broken impl. What they did successfully was to make person-centric scopes (rooms) the default. This obviously has a lot of mass appeal due to the inherent psychological effects (cf. "why babies cry"). But again, I don't see how this has a place in any productive environment.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Twitter isn't a chat system, even if people abuse it that way. If you want to continue casting the argument in terms of why Twitter is worse at group chat than IRC, I'll continue conceding that you're right about group chat and totally missing the point about Twitter. There is a difference between a status update (which people already organize their days around in big companies) and a chat message.
      - moe 18y ago
        Twitter isn't a chat system, even if people abuse it that way. Interesting level of abuse then. Those hash-tags seem to be mighty popular, probably only topped by "replies". There is a difference between a status update (which people already organize their days around in big companies) and a chat message. And what would that be? Twitter presents your "status updates" in exactly the same way that chat clients present their chat messages. Okay it's crippled as in you are not supposed to reply - but people are obviously not using it that way. Furthermore you ignore the fact that nobody in your company has only a single, canonical status that could be summed up in 140 chars. Everybody is involved in multiple projects and teams, each of which has a different status. There is a reason why all ticket- and project-management systems are project centric and not people centric. It's because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't.