Re: how to verb twitter

[Imri Goldberg <lorgandon () gmail com>]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 5:28 PM, David M Chess <chess () us ibm com> wrote:

> P.S. Have we all seen Omegle?  :)


Just checked it out, because you mentioned it.
My impressions:
1. Technically, it works really well.
2. What it is: web-based chat with random strangers.
3. Reminds me of my early days on IRC. You meet new people that are
guaranteed to be at least somewhat interested in talking.
4. There is full anonymity, in the sense that you don't have a consistent
identity that's kept from one conversation to another.*
5. There is no cost to disconnecting, if you don't like the conversation.
6. It's very much like speed-irc, as in "speed dating" as opposed to regular
dating.
7. Since you get a very specific IRC-like experience (meeting new people
you'll never meet again anonymously), you can practice like Socrates did on
the beach. You have only a few minutes and a few sentences to convince
someone you're interesting, or they just disconnect, and you both move on.
8. you still have a lot of the IRC like stuff, as in being asked "a/s/l" and
so on.
9. I wondered how secure it is, who is logging the conversations/ip
addresses involved etc.

All in all, a cute service. Also nice to know it was written by an 18-year
old that's just finishing high-school, and as I said, it works well.

Cheers,
Imri.

* I was reminded of a very good discussion of online identities here:
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html . Old, but thought-provoking
read. The relevant quote from that text is:

"Inside the MOO, however, such thinking marked a person as one of two
basically subcompetent types. The first was the newbie, in which case the
confusion was understandable, since there were few MOOers who had not, upon
their first visits as anonymous "guest" characters, mistaken the place for a
vast playpen in which they might act out their wildest fantasies without
fear of censure. Only with time and the acquisition of a fixed character do
players tend to make the critical passage from anonymity to pseudonymity,
developing the concern for their character's reputation that marks the
attainment of virtual adulthood."



-- 
Imri Goldberg
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www.algorithm.co.il/blogs/
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