Deane called me out yesterday on my use of twitter. His post, entitled Kingdom of the Non Sequitur, railed against the frequency of the inside joke (on twitter).

Being new to twitter, Deane is still concerned with how best to use the service. When he looks back at each tweet, he’d like to be able to say, “yep, that’s a complete, cogent thought. It’s a mini blog post.” Here’s a great example of one such tweet:

Male lion + female tiger = a liger. They’re much larger than either parent. Female lion + male tiger = a tigon. They’re much smaller.

This is definitely a mini blog post. And an interesting one at that. I had no idea there were enough of these in the world to establish an expectation for size.

But Twitter doesn’t ask for anything more than an answer to the question: What are you doing?

So, in this regard, learning about the non-magical characteristics of ligers and tigons really doesn’t give any clues as to what Deane is up to. Granted, Deane is tweeting as @gadgetopia, which also happens to be the name of his blog. And If I had to guess what Gadgetopia was up to at any given time, I’d say mini blog posts.

But I tweet as myself, and sometimes I’m just not very concerned with cogency. As in the tweet he points to as an example of an inside joke:

Has anyone seen @brianoberkirch’s dongle?

For what it’s worth, this just happened to be what I was thinking at the time. Actually, the full tweet was intended to go like this:

Has anyone seen @brianoberkirch’s dongle? Also, why does this remind me of the song Detachable Penis?

But I accidentally posted half the tweet when I bounced to Google to confirm the name of the band.

Back to the point. I use twitter to (1) post what I’m doing, (2) post what I’m thinking, (3) ask a question, or (4) respond to something somebody else is (4a) doing, (4b) thinking, or (4c) asking. My twitter account really doesn’t represent anything more profound.

So, even though I’m probably not always thoughtful enough to hold back an inside joke, this just happened to be what I was thinking at the time.

I hope this helps, Deane. Be sure to let me know in the comments if you found this:
(a) extremely helpful
(b) kind of helpful
(c) not really that helpful

I don’t know about you, but I just bought a bunch of AAPL stock. I was feeling pretty smart about the whole thing too when I put in the order at $109.

Today the stock closed at $97.

As it turns out, some wingnut pushed a story that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, and the market reacted.

If we backed up a few (2) months, we’d see Apple stock valued as high as $179. Speculation regarding Jobs’ health, economic uncertainty in the financial sector, and an upcoming election, however, have all added to the perception that somehow the stock is now risky.

People seem content to let unrelated events pile up and guide decisions. They stop acting on ideas, and they overreact to loud noises. They forget the golden rule.

And yes, you have to click the link to get to the golden rule. Godspeed.