If you are work from home and are vaguely interested in what’s happening with new Web applications, every day’s email and news feeds can brim with temptation to explore the latest new thing, rather than getting on with your planned work. For those who make a business of exploring the latest new things, there is no conflict.
Take Twitter, for instance.
And some who have tried to understand Twitter and given up might well say, Yes, take Twitter – a long way away.
Others are either more curious or are even Twitterholics.
Just over a month ago I posted a fence-sitting podcast on the subject at Business Blogging Show.
I’ve since asked others and had mixed reports, but more people I
respect as knowing about these things seem to be getting on board, and
I’d hate to miss out 
For the sake of anyone who is not on Twitter or hasn’t figured out what it is, the Wikipedia explanation is:
Twitter explains itself more pithily, with less emphasis on the technology and more on the social networking aspect:
There is an interesting video on chrisbrogan.com, where Robert Scoble talks with friends about Twitter. Dr Robert Pepper asked “what is Twitter?”
Some quotes from Robert’s contributions:
“It’s really lame and really stupid but all your friends are going to be on it and so you’re going to be in it too someday.”
A lot of people when they first see Twitter think of it as a chat room and it is like a chat room, “only you can remove the idiots”.
Benjamin Higginbotham has a short but helpful post on Technology Evangelist – Twitter is best explained through Twittervision:
I just could not explain it in a way that they would understand. Until
now.
He believes Twittervision and Twittermaps demonstrate what Twitter does, what it makes possible.
When you click on Twittervision you get a moving map of the world, with instant flagging of Twitter posts. Be warned – it can be hypnotic.
With Twittermaps I can define my location. And in fact I can have several locations and Twitter which one I am in at present.
I’ve now installed on this blog (left sidebar) a couple of Twitter components:
A Twitter “badge” where I post items about what I’m doing/thinking and with a link to my Twitter page, under my Twitter (and MyBlogLog) handle of “beachblogger”.
And hyperlinked pictures of Twitter friends.
I imagine it’s fairly obvious that Twitter could be a real distraction for anyone working from home. Can it also add value? My guess, picking up on a comment in the video linked to above, is that depends on the business context each person works in. For me it makes sense so far to explore it further, I think mainly in terms of the possibilities of “mini-blogging” and of course social networking.
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For what it’s worth, some government agencies I know block twitter in all incarnations. So having a Javascript badge containing Twitter information will block the parent blog from loading in a browser in order to effectively block the Twitter content.
Bernard
Thanks for that. Forgive my ignorance, but would having the Flash version be better?