Giving Twitter (and Twitterrific) a Go
I was chatting with an old friend this morning and he asked if I had done anything with Twitter, and I told him that I'd looked into it, and the Mac client, Twitterrific, but hadn't done anything. He mentioned his primary reason was the same as mine - it seemed that a lot of indie Mac developers are using it, and it might be a way to learn something. However, I had looked at enough posts that I was pretty sure that the twits were not about coding as much as they were about personal-stuff. Which isn't bad, it's just not technical.
But since he asked, I figured it'd be something I'd give a go. So I went to Twitter and signed up as drbobbeaty and then downloaded Twitterrific and got that configured and ready to go. Then we sent a few tweets back and forth, and realized that it's not as immediate as IM - which I use all the time, but it does have a 'chat room' component to it that IM doesn't have. You can post a tweet and many people can see it at roughly the same time. While I do wish it were more of a 'service' such that the connection wasn't polling the web site, I can see that it's done this way to make it more reliable as the connections don't have to stay up and that helps get things going faster.
I was pleased that Twitterrific was a serious Mac app - looking and acting like a solid Mac app and not like something written in Java using Swing. That's always nice. Also, it seems like there's a critical mass on this app, so if anything is going to get where I'd like it to be, this is the most likely candidate. So I registered it. Only $15, and to support indie Mac developers, that's a good deal.
I'll see what happens as we go... I think the real thing will be if I monitor enough 'friends' to make it interesting, or just enough to make it like IM. And for IM I don't think it's possible to beat Adium. Well... I'll give it a go with Bret, and see where it goes from there.