November 12, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Twitter Your Issues
November 13, 2008 at 1:26 am
Doesn't the WWF have something to do with this type of thing?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx
(That's the Windows Workflow Foundation, not the World Wildlife Fund, or the wrestling.) 🙂
November 13, 2008 at 3:02 am
I have to say that entrusting functionality to a third party scares me, its an extra tier of complexity or point of failure. Alerts I can semi understand, but it still makes me itch from a security point of view - and I'm a programmer not a DBA. A lot of this so called Web 2.0 functionality tends to be in the same vein - its a rehash of an existing idea. Twitter I can understand for conferences and social gatherings, but facebook functionality and its ilk eludes me - I barely get enough time to speak to my true friends now!
Anyway I've facebooked your server....n'ah.
Check out Tony Davis article on Simple Talk (http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/tony_davis/archive/2008/11/11/70414.aspx) re Forums.
November 13, 2008 at 4:08 am
I too wonder about the long-term value of Twitter. I follow more than a handful of "tweeters" and have found that there is a lot of static that has to be sorted through for a worthwhile gem. Security is definitely an issue with this medium. A Social Engineering effort applied to these "tweets" can surprisingly reveal quite a bit of information.
Ideas such as the one that you presented regarding Powershell sounds interesting and demonstrate that there are some uses beyond telling the world about the latest event in one's life. Hopefully as this product evolves and matures it will become more valuable.
November 13, 2008 at 4:40 am
I'd be very careful using SMS, as i understand it, there is no guarantee when the message will be delivered. I've had massive delays on my UK service.
November 13, 2008 at 6:08 am
I'm a twit, & I, too, am still trying to find out why. Not that I need yet another distraction in my life, 😉 yet I have to admit, it doesn't take long. I even blogged about it:
Is Twitter the YouTube of 2008?
http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay/archive/2008/10/19/is-twitter-the-youtube-of-2008.aspx
The truth is, it's a hoot, I'm meeting new friends, & it's fun to to read the tweets.
Will it ever come to anything? We'll see...
Jimmy May, Aspiring Geek
November 13, 2008 at 6:30 am
Hey Steve,
In your article, you said
I've been using Twitter for about 4 or 5 months now and it's one of those things that I'm not sure of the benefit of using it.
While I admit, I have not been using it as religiously as I used to, here is one area where I really found Twitter's usefulness.
Twitter enables me to stay better connected with my friends (the ones that use it, anyway).
When I was first introduced, I thought, "this is just stupid". But, after a while, I found that for those friends of mine that were good about keeping it updated and actually answering the question, "what am I doing.", I found that I was actually building stronger relationships with these friends. Why? even though a simple "Going to the park" message doesn't seem like much, if you look at a friend's whole week, or month, you can instantly see all the events that have happened of enough significance for them to actually microblog about it. This gives you a small window into their lives and that can actually help you to get to know them a bit better.
As a busy developer, who was never particularly very good about reaching out and talking to my friends, and who, for some reason, get's phone shy every now and then. I have found that this is a better way to keep in touch than my previous model. I find it easier to say a little blurb about what's going on in my own life, so some people get to know me better, too.
The result is that the next time I get together with these friends, most of the small talk has already been gotten out of the way and rather than asking them what they've been up to, I can ask them more specific questions like, "how was that boating trip you took the other week?", or "How are you coming along with the job search?".
Again, the point is I just end up feeling more connected.
Of course, some people use it as a marketing tool as well, and I've gotten some useful information from time to time from some of those types of folks, too.
For the most part, I try to get more quality connections than those. I don't just follow everyone who follows me. I will typically only follow someone who is following me if I see some substance in their posts, and if they don't have way more people they are following than who are following them.
November 13, 2008 at 6:34 am
The only place I've seen value in Twitter is when you do need to easily message to a group - conference, trips to Disney World, etc, where you can say 'I'm going to ...'. Other than that, I don't care what you had for breakfast! The bigger issue I have with Twitter is it can easily add another set of task switches to your day. Most of us suffer from task switching already, adding more doesn't strike me as a good idea.
Rather than Twitter, wouldn't just publishing feeds internally work for all except the most high priority messages? I've long encourage teams to use a blog internally to post about scheduled down time, changes applied, etc, as a way to inform and maintain a history. The only thing I see wrong with adding Twitter (or only using as you suggest) is that we're back to task switching. Unless I need to act on a high percentage of the messages I'm going to spend a lot of time looking at my phone for no reason.
November 13, 2008 at 6:38 am
I neglected to add:
November 13, 2008 at 6:41 am
November 13, 2008 at 6:48 am
I make pretty heavy use of Twitter, to the point where I even have TwitterBerry installed on my BlackBerry. For me it's extremely useful. Not only is there the social aspect of it all, which I find great, but I have found it useful in my day-to-day job, too. I've also found it serves as another medium to participate in a community of tech folks, all very smart, all who sometimes run into problems or technologies they're not intimately familiar with. For instance, yesterday was an example where a short convo on Twitter introduced a very smart developer into bcp and BULK INSERT rather than just straight INSERT statements for a database migration. Now if you want to keep your tech separate from your social, twitter's really not for you. But I have found that, for instance, when I was in Disney World with my family, some advice about those passes which allow you to come back to a ride later, benefitted. And that was posted by a tech guy who happened to be on my follower/followee list.
Also, to maximize the effectiveness of Twitter, you really need to get one of the clients that makes use of the Twitter APIs. The web interface presented is extremely limited. I happen to use TweetDeck as it lets me see all the tweets from those I follow, any tweets specifically sent my way (replies), as well as direct messages which don't appear to the public. But it also allows me to group people so I see their tweets both in the main feed, but also separately, so they get more attention. And TweetDeck also allows me to keep a column open which basically searches Twitter for any posts on "SQL Server." Other clients do similar things.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
November 13, 2008 at 8:12 am
Interesting responses and I hadn't really considered the social aspect much. I don't get the updates on my phone because it is too distracting for me, but I do get them on the web and a few times a day I'll see if anyone is doing anything interesting.
SMS isn't guaranteed, but over a group of people it might make sense. If you're the only person getting alerts, there might be better ways to do this.
November 13, 2008 at 8:16 am
I have heard cases where a technology group creates a Twitter account and sets the updates to private. Then, their technicians follow (and are approved) and therefore, they use Twitter to do the alerting when a problem occurs. I agree that this is risky (in my mind) because you have no SLA in place with Twitter. However, some folks seem happy with it.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
November 13, 2008 at 8:54 am
Interesting concept. I've always liked the idea of servers telling you when they're developing problems, at least when they're not too sick to be unable to tell you, and we (as the DBA community) generally have our jobs and other alerts set to let us know when things aren't working as expected. I currently don't carry a CrackBerry, though that may change in the next year. As far as the security/broadcasting sensitive information issue is concerned, I don't see that as a big deal. Write your scripts to alias or obfuscate the server names and keep the feeds private so your server names don't go out into the wild. I'd be more concerned about failure to deliver the message, though CrackBerries are by no means 100% reliable either.
Fortunately my database servers are pretty stable and don't bother me too much.
Unfortunately I can't check out your feed, Steve: we just installed an iPrism web filter and it's currently blocked. I sent a request for an exception, we'll see what happens.
I do like the idea of "going to the park/movies" feed and being somewhat more caught up on your friend's lives, but I don't know of any of my friends who use Twitter, so kind of a moot point.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
November 13, 2008 at 9:15 am
Twitter is another way to be always connected. Who needs that? There has to be downtime somewhere.
Friends and family get irritated as it is that I don't check personal email thoughout the day (not allowed at my current gig). I used to use IM and angered those on my list when I wasn't replying instantly. I don't need the aggravation.
I don't want nor need 24/7 connectivity. At work when something fails, yes, but that's the exception.
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