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Subject: The problem with Twitter
Twitter gets a lot of press, and I confess I don't really understand why. I mean, I understand that the technologically illiterate amongst us are agog at this amazing ability to post 140-character messages... Actually, I don't even get that. The best I can figure is that Twitter made something easier and more accessible so that the slobbering masses could figure it out.
But beyond the reason people are excited about it is something else I don't get: What's it GOOD for? There has always been some fundamental disconnect between me and Twitter. Despite a week during the Pirate Bay trial where I found the twitter updates to be timely and informative, I couldn't figure out why anyone would prefer twitter over other existing methods of communication.
I still don't know why other people find it fascinating, but I have finally figured out exactly why I don't: I have to pay attention to it to make it useful, and I've got other things to do.
Never mind that most updates are trivially uninteresting minutae about peoples' lives ("I just ate soup!"), I have to dedicate some new view-hole in my life to watch the damned thing. Even if they were posting interesting things, how am I to get the updates in a timely fashion? How do I filter the uninteresting noise?
I already subscribe to about 75 great RSS feeds of people or sites I find valuable, twitter requires some sort of dedication to view and the signal:noise ratio is so bad I can't even see the bottom of the graph.
Twitter is not valuable to me, it's too hard to watch and too much trivia. I've come up with a use for it (my forum sig is auto-updated with my last twitter post) but I have to believe that everyone who uses it is a techno-newb that can't understand IRC and finds registering for forums unbearably complicated.
If you're interested, here's my Twitter feed, though it's mostly random quotes and other uninteresting shit that looks funny in a sig, but makes no sense in just about any context).
My collated newsfeed (via friendfeed) is much, much more interesting.
But beyond the reason people are excited about it is something else I don't get: What's it GOOD for? There has always been some fundamental disconnect between me and Twitter. Despite a week during the Pirate Bay trial where I found the twitter updates to be timely and informative, I couldn't figure out why anyone would prefer twitter over other existing methods of communication.
I still don't know why other people find it fascinating, but I have finally figured out exactly why I don't: I have to pay attention to it to make it useful, and I've got other things to do.
Never mind that most updates are trivially uninteresting minutae about peoples' lives ("I just ate soup!"), I have to dedicate some new view-hole in my life to watch the damned thing. Even if they were posting interesting things, how am I to get the updates in a timely fashion? How do I filter the uninteresting noise?
I already subscribe to about 75 great RSS feeds of people or sites I find valuable, twitter requires some sort of dedication to view and the signal:noise ratio is so bad I can't even see the bottom of the graph.
Twitter is not valuable to me, it's too hard to watch and too much trivia. I've come up with a use for it (my forum sig is auto-updated with my last twitter post) but I have to believe that everyone who uses it is a techno-newb that can't understand IRC and finds registering for forums unbearably complicated.
If you're interested, here's my Twitter feed, though it's mostly random quotes and other uninteresting shit that looks funny in a sig, but makes no sense in just about any context).
My collated newsfeed (via friendfeed) is much, much more interesting.
BLEARGH
This post was edited on 2009-04-17, 09:37 by 
