Twitter ye not: is it a worthy developer zone?

I know plenty of people have blogged on Twitter already, so I’ll try and keep this fresh. I’ve only been a member for a month now and have been trying to assess whether it is a useful ground to exist in for developers.

After initially finding that some people really will “tweet” out loud on what type of sandwich they are having and whether or not they had a good night’s sleep I was somewhat put off.

But I stuck with it and have found that the people who I tend to know are extremely useful and interesting. I’ve been pointed to Mozilla Ubiquity news that I missed (thanks CJ) as a result of it and I think it’s a great barometer for the mood of other technical writers.

I’ll go so far as to say that I’ve even been interested to find out what PR people are working on – maybe even to get a heads up on what they might be cooking up in their evil black cauldrons of spin. Come on, you know I’m only joking.

Your esteemed ZDNet.co.uk community editor Karen Friar and I have discussed the idea of social networking channels in the developer world before now. We wondered whether those with their nose in the code ever give away too much of the intellectual property they may be sitting on while online in these arenas. It’s an idea I’d like to examine in full some time, so let me know if you’re interested.

As for junk, well a certain Mr JFTLX5RRGGY9 connected with me this morning. Thankfully Twitter tells me that, “This account is currently suspended and is being investigated due to strange activity.” Yeah, right.

Don’t forget that CNET has its own Twitter channel that you can subscribe to and there are plenty of other official developer resources to plug into as well, so it’s winning me over so far.

But perhaps the reason I am getting value out of this from a software development perspective is that I know some great people? Maybe if I weren’t so lucky? Who knows…

I’ve been to developer symposia (Adobe MAX stands out) where the audience has been asked to Twitter responses to presentations throughout keynotes. I’m now following analysts like Merv Adrian who I have seen present at recent database events. Again, all good stuff…

I think it’s a good leveler too and it could give us a new handle on the way we digest and interpret IT news. There’s news. Then there’s blogs. Then there’s this other mood that people seem to exhibit on Twitter, my favourite example being this thought yesterday from Chris Green, “C'mon people, Google Chrome is JUST a beta release of a web browser, it is not the second coming of Christ or the end of Microsoft!”

So for a developer-focused view of Twitter in summary, I have to say it’s OK by me. Whether it’s useful for business and the business of software development seems to be still very much in debate.