Sunday, February 1, 2009

Using Twitter...

I've been using Twitter for a little over a year now.

Initially, I didn't really get it. I was just trying it out since many of the people I read were using it. After that initial post, it was 3 months before I used it again. The 3rd time was 2 months after that.

From my timeline, I started to really use it at the end of July after I was laid off at the behest of Jake. He suggested using it to search for jobs. Though I didn't find any that matched up well for me, it was my breakthrough.

Last month I broke the 1000 tweet milestone.

I've used Twitter to search for jobs, to meet new (Oracle) people, to ask questions, to scream from the rooftop and other things. I try and encourage others to use it as well, most recently my colleague @serge_a_storms.

It's a great way to ask questions too. A couple of weeks ago I posted a question asking for scripts to download source. @neilkod reminded me of DBMS_METADATA and I was off. I really use to love the OTN Forums participating heavily in the Application Express forum. I like this medium a lot better though. Just a quick tweet and I can get answers or pointers from a multitude of people. I don't think it replaces the forums just yet, but I like it.

Probably my favorite part of it though is the "screaming from the rooftop" effect. @crisatunity seems to have taken this to a new level recently which is quite amusing. What do I mean by screaming from the rooftop?

You know those times you are going through thousands of lines of code and you see something stupid? You want to scream right? Tweet it. Goes without saying though it is public and will stay around forever...but it's fun. Sometimes you'll get sympathy from others, sometimes you'll get crickets.

Have you tried it out yet? What are your thoughts on it? If you do use it, do you blog as well?

5 comments:

Clever Idea Widgetry said...

Twitter isn't quite reality, which puts it several rungs above Oracle forums.

And, for the record, I'm not always insano.

oraclenerd said...

I know you're not *always* crazy...but it is fun to watch.

Jake said...

Twitter is social search done right. I use it a lot for questions and recommendations.

I do less rooftop-shouting these days b/c of the public, you-don't-know-who's-listening thing. It is fun to watch other people rant and rave though.

It is funny how many people (me too) try Twitter several times before finding a use that works.

Anonymous said...

boy, that neilkod sure soulds like an incredible guy!

oraclenerd said...

@jake

I can't really respond...you say everything so well!

@neil

I've heard rumors about that guy...but I have yet to receive a proper code review from the DBA.