Feedonomics

This weekend I tried an experiment to see if I could use Twittergram to record a podcast-style walking tour. I drove down to Harvard and walked around while posting Twittergrams and taking pictures. Then I posted the pictures to Flickr and merged them with the Twittergrams.

I had been tremendously influenced by Adam Curry’s first podcast tour of Miami, and even tried to do a similar podcast tour myself soon after. I discovered that I have massive stage fright when in front of a microphone, which was shocking, because talking is usually something I have no problem doing. My picture should be in the dictionary entry for pedantic. Yet when I know there is a microphone recording me, both my brain and my jaw lock up. I was really pleased to discover that the Twittergram method of just calling a special number from any phone and talking for up to 30 seconds eliminated that mental block. What I also discovered when listening to the results was that I use “really” far too often. Thank you Twittergram for making me aware of that verbal tick. I’m really going to watch it from now on.

The most interesting thing I learned was that just as Twitter’s limitation of 140 characters improves my writing, I think that Twittergram’s 30 second limit also will improve my speaking. Trying to tell a story in 30 seconds is tough, but it teaches you a lot about verbal timing.

Adam Curry was using technology built by Dave Winer for those first podcasts, and Twittergram is another Dave Winer invention. Dave’s contributions sometimes get erased from technology history, but he should know that with Twittergram he has definitely nailed it again. I can see everyone from Iraq war correspondents, to Paris Hilton, to Osama Bin Laden adopting this technology. Whether it is used for good or evil, this will create another medium to go along with blogging, RSS feeds, and podcasting. Not a bad record.