Twitter filters RSD and Borg intelligence > 1

I'm continuing my study into the big question, "Why is twitter here?" ;) What is it good for and how will it change my life? As I stated earlier, I think it has value in the realm of tournament updates (a.k.a. live disseminated event coverage) as we saw this year at UPA College. Great, but I still haven't signed up for my own Twitter account.

An article on Wired helped explain my concerns as very common in society. Like other technologies in the past, we still don't know what Twitter does. Also, it might never revolutionize anything. I don't have to panic and worry that I'll be out on my porch (if I had a porch) yelling at kids to stop twittering on my front lawn.

Well, I've come to two further insights on how twitter might be useful to us. The first is related to RSD. In the past, we've voted on the health of RSD with concerns it is getting spammed to death (gmail does so well on my mail why can't it work for forums?). I, personally, view RSD less and less due to the spam. That, and I prefer the rss format where information comes to me when it's updated and I don't have to visit.

Twitter might offer us a solution here. Using the tagging system we could easily make rsd twitter discussions. To sort the different topics, we would simply use two tags. The first tag identifies that we are discussing ultimate and the second tag categorizes in a topic.

This sort of live discussion format has been used by some blogs to make the commenting/forum based aspect more community based and live. I think it would work as a second RSD based format, but twitter still lacks the character length for some topics and discussions (maybe links to rsd threads solves this problem essentially filtering the spam). For example, ranking teams would be difficult in 140 characters.

The second insight I've had on twitter and our Ultimate discussion community is actually not mine. This TED talk:

by James Surowiecki gave some insight into twitter, blogging, and social networking. The idea I felt so strongly about was this concept that a collective intelligence is better than an individual, and that's what these forms of communication bring. Therefore, my plea to all you young players (as well as mature players) out there is to get involved in the social community. Sure, The Huddle, Parinella's Blog, and Match are written by top players and knowledgable insiders, but your thoughts and your ideas are just as valuable since they come from another perspective. Essentially, the more critical mass we have the better off we'll be as a whole. Who cares if a topic you would like to discuss was previously covered by someone else. Give it your perspective and add to the collective intelligence. Seems Borg like, but it's actually the opposite.

PJ

College Nationals Twitter Administration

Hey Folks,

David Hunt has asked me to pass on this message:

" I was hoping everyone posting nationals updates on Twitter could agree on a hashtag for their updates. I say we go with #upanats so that tracking down everyones updates is a bit easier. I'm also thinking of getting a page up on BananaCut to aggregate all the info but that depends on if I have time to throw it together or not.

The RSD post is here: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.disc/browse_thread/thread/fffb6dd5994e0f59/"

PJ

College Nationals Twitter Resource

No poll Thursday...

Instead of your regularly scheduled post, I thought I might offer this blog to collect twitterers details for those of you kind enough to help us stay in touch at UPA College Nationals. Feel free to post your details in the comments or email me (jamieson dot peter at gmail dot com) and I'll bump you into the main post and link to this post on the right sidebar.

For those of you who don't have accounts on twitter, you'll need to get one if you want even more up-to-date info than score reporter.

Twitterers at College Nationals:

• http://twitter.com/upa_college09_w - Michelle Ng (UPA Women's Division writer)
• http://twitter.com/upa_college09_o - Chris Spittal (UPA Open Division writer)
• http://twitter.com/stanfordblood - Stanford Open and Women
  
• http://twitter.com/blultimate - UCLA Women
• http://twitter.com/cumamabird - Colorado University Open
• http://twitter.com/jbaumer42 - UCSD (+ others)
• http://twitter.com/jephb - UPenn (+ others)
• http://twitter.com/thebknation - Iowa State Women
  
• http://twitter.com/pittultimate - Pitt
• http://twitter.com/Ultiplayer29 - Wisconsin
• http://twitter.com/talpostal - General
• http://twitter.com/jojahultimate- Georgia
• http://twitter.com/BJ_Owens - General
• http://twitter.com/IllinoisUltimat - Illinois Open and Women
• http://twitter.com/fjrhox - USC women

Possible others courtesy of Paul:

• http://twitter.com/rppp - Michigan
• http://twitter.com/TheBKNation - Iowa State
  
• http://twitter.com/cutrules - Carleton
  
• http://twitter.com/bcultimate - Boston College
  
• http://twitter.com/doomultimate - Syracuse
  
• http://twitter.com/hodaglove - Wisconsin
  
• http://twitter.com/USF_Ultimate - University of South Florida
  
• http://twitter.com/UNLVUltimate - UNLV
  
• http://twitter.com/JojahUltimate - Georgia
  
• http://twitter.com/lutherultimate - Luther
  
• http://twitter.com/auultimate - Anderson
  

PJ