Work Nouveau

I first had a look at Twitter a year or so ago, and I must admit that after a couple of weeks dipping in and out, I could not really see the point. At the end of last year I was persuaded by my son to revisit Twitter, but not treat it as a messaging – microblogging environment, but more as a mechanism for searching out new ideas and up to the instant expert reflection. This is of course in addition to the RSS feeds, daily, weekly monthly newsletters, and the occasional bit of serendipity, as mentioned in my previous blog.

For me Twitter has in fact supplanted or at least partially replaced some of these mechanisms, but as usual the main problem is deciding what tweets to examine. Although the people I follow act as a first phase filter of information that might interest me, I still need to examine each link to find that information. A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to take part in a limited beta test of MicroPlaza a product designed to provide a solution for those who want to use Twitter as the information resource it has the potential to be.

The idea is simple. In the normal timeline (tweets flowing through the network) Web locations are tweeted and retweeted in various compressed formats, along with a short comment.

MicroPlaza pulls this information together and presents a list of sites  either by timeline or frequency of occurrence, including the comments made by my network.

This is fine if you have a homogeneous network that is primarily focused on one topic, but most of us are interested in a variety of things. Enterprise 2.0, telework, UK politics, business issues, social issues, folk music, friends, genealogy and direct family, all influence whom I follow. MicroPlaza enables me to arrange my network into tribes (groups), some of them will exist only in one tribe and others in several tribes according to my selection. I can then review each tribal timeline with the most recent information and postings.

On top of this I can “become” one of the people I follow, and see their timeline based on tweets to them.

This is great. Prior to my day’s activities I can look at those items that were of greatest impact to my network on a certain topic. If I have a meeting on sustainability coming up, I can quickly inform myself of topical items. If I know their is going to be a focus on a certain aspect, I can put myself in the shoes of my favourite expert and see it through their eyes.

MicroPlaza is not the finished item yet, search facilities are being added, and various suggestions will be taken on board based on feedback from the public Beta. As a recent convert to Twitter – I realise the potential usefulness of it but also the overwhelming impact it can have as a time consumer. MicroPlaza gives me an instant view of what is of interest to me on a given topic. For a lot of users this may be the only tool they will ever need to take advantage of the potential of Twitter.