Jott to Twitter…why the URL?
August 5, 2008
From time to time we get questions about the url that appears when you use the Twitter Jott Link to post to Twitter with your voice. So what exactly is it? Simply a link to the audio file so your Twitter followers can listen to you Tweet. What are the pros of having this link? Well…
1) Your Twitter friends can hear excitement/disappointment/joy/sorrow in your voice.
2) You’ll be sure that sarcasm doesn’t get lost in text translation.
3) Sometimes the transcription isn’t perfect.
It looks like item number 3 has a typo (or transcripto, depends on whether it was intentional or not. :D)
Comment by Sum1Else — August 5, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
It would have been clever had it been intentional! Unfortunately not so, I just didn’t read it carefully enough. Thanks for pointing it out
Comment by kate — August 5, 2008 @ 10:22 pm
I like the feature but a little explanation of the tinyurl would be helpful so people know that it’s an audio transcription, not a link relevant to whatever the message is. Maybe a simple “This is my twitter message. Audio: http://tinyurl.com/1234a“. Ya know?
Comment by Justin — August 10, 2008 @ 10:33 pm
@Justin - That’s interesting feedback. We were trying not to include additional characters because Twitter messages are so short. Maybe it’s worth taking up a few more characters though so there is a clear understanding of what the URL is.
Comment by kate — August 11, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Maybe there can be an option where we as the users can choose to have an Audio: disclaimer before the link or to leave it as is. This way those who want the clarification can have that, and those who don’t want to use up more characters won’t need to.
Comment by Jeff — August 11, 2008 @ 10:17 am
I’d prefer it if we could opt out of showing the audio link in tweets. I’m happy to send me tweets out to the general public, but hesitant to let just anyone hear what my voice sounds like when I’m speaking slowly into a Jott. Which reminds me, I do speak my Jotts haltingly to help ensure accurate transcription - are you saying I should just speak normally, like I’m talking to a friend?
Comment by Tri — August 11, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
Or you could just invent your own jott.com tiny-url service for jotts. Twitter won’t tiny-urlify URLS under a certain length.
Comment by William Henderson — August 11, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
This is really great feedback, thanks all. It sometimes hard to navigate what works best for everyone within a particular web community, so the more opinions and such on how the you want it to work, the more opportunities we have to align ourselves with that. In other words… keep the suggestions coming!
Comment by kate — August 12, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
I wish we had the option of opting out of the URL because it is using up valuable characters that I need for my micro-blog.
Comment by Josh — August 27, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
I definitely wouldn’t use it if folks could hear my voice and the background. The whole idea about the tweets (to me) is to communicate on a more personal level but to also have a bit more control over what I say than just raw talk. Playing the audio takes away that little hint of mystery.
Comment by Chuck Green — October 4, 2008 @ 8:39 am
I also wish to opt out of the URL. I leave twits as Rabbits named Buns and Chou Chou. If someone listens, they hear my voice which is middle aged and scratchy.
Comment by Nicholas Quixote — November 1, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
[…] We’ve blogged before about why you may want the audio links, but for those folks that would rather not include it in your Tweets – now you can remove it. […]
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