Twitter Promotion

It's interesting to me just how dead the MUCK gets between late Fall and Christmas, and then how it comes back to life in January.  Players we've not seen in months suddenly resurface out of nowhere, work gets done that's been sitting on the back burner for time out of mind.  There's something vaguely appropriate about that.

Lately, some of us are starting to use Twitter.

It's hard to explain what it is, really. I guess the best way to describe it in MUCK terms is that it's an @doing, assuming you mean the original intent of that message on the WHOlist. Initially, players used that spot to literally indicate what they were doing at that moment, thereby either disclaiming themselves as unavailable or inviting others to join. Truthfully, I can't remember a time when we ever actually USED it for that, but that was obviously the original intent.

Twitter is a web-based real-world @doing message. Ideally, you pop on periodically and post a little blurb about whatever it is you're up to or what you're thinking about at that moment. Maybe it could be said to be an abbreviated blog. Or an open Facebook 'status' message. Or something.

I don't know. Either way, it's surprisingly fun for being based on so simple a concept. Perhaps what makes it so fun is that a lot of famous people use it, such as Jonathan Coulton and Wil Wheaton. I don't know why it's fun to be aware the very instant that Wil Wheaton finds himself craving a doughnut, but somehow it is.

Twitter can run through certain Instant Messenger applications, specifically GoogleTalk. This is a neat feature, because you can have the Twitter messages posted by people you're 'following' sent to you via IM, and you can post your own Twitter updates without hassling with the website. Even neater, using the IM side, you can 'track' a keyword (like, say, 'Narnia', just as a for-instance) anytime someone posts a Twitter message containing that word, you get to see it.

This has proven to be interestingly handy in terms of promotion. Paxa and I have discovered that if we twitter anything about 'Narnia MUCK' and include the website, we get a bunch of guest hits on the website. Neat! You have to have the space between 'Narnia' and 'MUCK', though. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work otherwise.

We've had a couple of new requests lately. Whether this is a direct result of the Twitter messages or not, I'm not sure. Our new character request system doesn't ask prospective players how they heard of us, though maybe I should add that in again, just for the sake of my own curiousity.

Anyway, if any of you decide to sign up for Twitter, be sure to follow me so I can follow you back. If you're eating a pickle, darnit, I want to be the first to know!