In my first attempt to understand Twitter, it went totally over my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel it suited me, it was simply I didn’t know how / why I should use it. For my second attempt some months later (admittedly driven by a need to understand it for work purposes and from a technological platform angle) it became second nature.

One of the things that fascinated a non-technie like me was the ability to update my nano-blog via mobile (first by text message, then later by native mobile app / mobile web) which was something I couldn’t do at that time through my blog. This appealed greatly to someone like me who had a lot of idle ‘bloggable’ time spent on the bus each day, but not much idle time available at home. So from a practicality point-of-view, it was very useful. But also, being able to type something into a mobile phone and later see it online was, and still is, awesome.

Secondly, another barrier to blogging is that blog posts, in my mind, have become long, thought-out pieces that require research, a good introduction, a sound argument and a solid conclusion. Way too much work for idle minds like mine. Good blogs are now about a particular subject, and have an editorial direction. They have become useful resources. Otherwise they become a blog about my life and my dog, which is soooo Web 1.0. So Twitter’s 140 character-limit was perfect. I could have done that via Facebook status updates but then again, Facebook status updates go to your Facebook friends – an established audience – which affected the things I’d want to write there. There’s no point writing about IA for instance, if you’re the ‘only IA in the village’ so to speak. Nah. On Twitter I can write what I like, and if you choose to follow me, well, that’s your choice then.

Thirdly, I can choose to follow (and learn from) some really interesting, insightful people. And if I wanted to, I could have a dialogue with them.

And fnally, I can choose to receive as much info as I want. So, unlike using instant messenger or chat, it’s not something that interrupts me and requires my attention instantly. It’s something that happens in the background that I can jump into when I like, as often as I like.

So Twitter’s not for everyone but it happens to serve my needs perfectly!

For work I was looking into placing items below the fold for a few sites. I was favouring the fat footer approach, and the more research I did the more it seemed the best approach. Ha! But wait. Isn’t everything you put below the fold destined for eternal user neglect and a lifetime of digital ‘what-ifs’? Well. I’ve always found this concept that users don’t scroll a bit mystifying. Even analysing my own web behaviour I find scrolling second nature, particularly with the proliferation of mice with scroll wheels (over 90% I think I read somewhere according to Logitech). With the rising popularity of long web pages like blogs, twitter pages, online newspapers, users are getting used to looking for content down the page. The way your site looks visually can also help entice users further down the page. If users scroll down one or two screens and just see solid blocks of text they will probably decide it’s too much ‘work’ to do and leave. However, good use of section titles, type face, labelling, graphics and colours would engage users sufficiently to keep them scrolling down. Of course, as long as users think they can find what they’re looking for they’ll keep looking.