Ruler of the Interwebs wrote:

Every time I see a major news outlet talk about how their news correspondents are “reporting live via twitter” I cringe. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Doesn’t make sense to me either. I mostly ignore the media hoopla over the service altogether. I mean, I was using it long before it went mainstream and even then I found it useful. :)

Well, I am what I call a twater (yes, a Twitter hater), and I still think I am perfectly justified in being a twater. It has less to do with the usefulness of the service than it has do with the media perception and acceptance of it as the second coming of technological nirvana (I represent all religions here on the Interwebs :)).

Every time I see a major news outlet talk about how their news correspondents are “reporting live via twitter” I cringe. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I wrote a long post on it on my blog,
http://ruleroftheinterwebs.blogspot.com

And no, you can’t follow it on Twitter.

A couple of times you wrote exactly what I was thinking in this post. People don’t get it and are too annoyed to try. Their attention spans of a 2 year old don’t help either. We all get carried away and tweet about dumb things every once in a while (I’m guilty of that as well), but overall it is a good service where you can find like-minded people or at least people with same/similar interests and exchange knowledge, information, experiences and opinions.

btw, come say hi @topicm Sorry, couldn’t resist. :)

Dude! Adam Savage uses twitter? Maybe today’s the day I’ll sign up then…

I know I need to use it, and facebook, and all of those other social networking things, but I keep putting it off…

It just crossed my mind that this is probably going to happen all over again when Google Wave hits the scene.

I am a bit ashamed for how long it took me to understand what twitter is about.

I think a prime reason was their own misleading explanation: “Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” This explanation just begs for the response you complained about: “why would I care what someone ate for lunch or what TV show they are watching right now?”

The way I understand it now is that twitter is to instant messaging what bloging is to email.

Take a thing like “Hey, I just saw the new spiderman movie, here is what I thought […] What did you think?” Some people do this with their friends through email, but it is a hassle to keep track of who to include in the to-list and who not to. Hence, it is just easier to do it via a blog, where you skip the step of directing the communication to any specific recipient. Twitter does the same thing, but for instant messaging.

I wonder if there are many more of these “next big things” to be discovered through taking an accepted form of communication and removing the requirement to direct and/or authenticate it.

dawn wrote:

I’m trying to cut back on web distractions (I only visit two or three blogs, forums, comics regularly and I don’t chat the way I used to.

Heh, I feel honored that my blog is one of the few chosen places you visit. :)

Also, I actually seem to notice the opposite trend here. A lot of my IRL conversations start with “Did you see so and so’s Facebook thing?” Also, relationships are not official until your Facebook says “in relationship with”. My cousin’s finance was actually required to create a facebook account when they started dating for that very purpose. :P

Ian Clifton wrote:

I think it’s best for real life friends (”Going to X Saturday; who wants to join?”), people with a common interest (”Awesome jQuery plugin released causes computers with IE to explode!”), and short jokes or humorous statements that I’m unlikely to remember two seconds later.

Yep. That’s exactly what I use it for. I follow people who I know IRL, who I find consistently amusing and who share common interests with me. Every once in a while I go through my follow list and downsize it removing anyone that I don’t instantly recognize.

jambarama wrote:

I tried using it, I found it was a superb waste of time. For every useful communication I got – like your SF twitter – I read 100 useless ones. Posting felt like shouting in an empty room and reading felt like I had found the lowest content RSS stream available. I suppose I just didn’t know the right way to do things.

Again, it depends who you follow and who follows you. If you follow/are followed by IRL or online friends it feels much more social.

Zel wrote:

Then again, maybe I’m wrong and you can use it effectively spending only ten minutes on it per day. How much time do you spend on it ?

Almost none. I lazily check them 2-3 times a day. More often if I’m stuck somewhere with just my blackberry and nothing interesting to do.

My tweets are replicated on facebook so I usually kill two birds with one stone when I post something to Twitter. I generally tweet few times a day but there are days when I just have nothing to say. I usually tweet when I’m either annoyed, happy or when I want to make a quick observation or a silly comment.

I use these services sparingly and definitely not to their full potential. Still for the little time I spend on them, they make me feel more connected. :)

@ Steve:
Funny thing is that the same could be said about almost every online network and/or service. Yes, this does apply to twitter but again – it depends who you follow. I could say the same thing about Facebook, Slashdot, Digg and reddit recently.

@ Square:

I may need to check identica out. Then again the more network I join the harder they become to follow.

Morghan wrote:

Twitter makes me feel old. Like those people in my family who just don’t get e-mail, not that they’re unable to use it, just that they don’t see the point or ever bother to get involved with it.

Sometimes I feel like that too, but then I just force myself to embrace the new. I don’t want to be left behind too much. :)

Also, Twitter shouldn’t make you feel old – if anything you should probably feel younger – since so few young people actually use the service.

Twitter makes me feel old. Like those people in my family who just don’t get e-mail, not that they’re unable to use it, just that they don’t see the point or ever bother to get involved with it. I have a lot of friends who use it, and I signed up so I could “follow” them, but I never remember to check it so I have as much of an idea what they’re saying now as I did before I signed up.

I started using twitter a while back, and you were among the first I followed.
After a while, twitter got really boring for me… and then I found identi.ca

I’ve been a pretty happy identi.ca user since. The community is more niche, and mostly full of geeks. It seems to suit my needs better. You can also link up your twitter and identi.ca accounts. And, if you’re wondering how to get there, http://identi.ca

Also, I might add, any twitter client using the api to work with twitter will work with identi.ca (if it didn’t already), it’s just a matter of changing the URL in the source (Which I’ve done with mitter, and it works great :D).

thanks for the post — very well said. this attitude drives me crazy. I’m not a regular twitter OR facebook user, although I find twitter vaguely interesting and have started following one or two people of interest. what is frustrating is that it seems like many people are initially against any new fad or technology but then as it integrates into the lives of everyday users then nobody thinks anything of it. these are the same people who made fun of e-mail and instant messaging and VoIP at first (and probably typewriters and telephones and telegraphs). i think there’s just a strong technophobic tenancy in many otherwise-open-minded people that is very annoying. my attitude is that if millions of people like it, there must be something to it and it’s worth giving it a try with an open-mind.