Twitter is Great…Fuck Twitter
Excuses. All around me I hear and see people throwing out excuses for why they don’t do this or they can’t do that. It is hard enough dealing with excuses, but now I have to read about the excuse of not doing something because of Twitter? It is starting to get out of hand. Don’t believe me? Here are the excuses that I have encountered this month.
- I don’t write insightful blog entries because I am too busy on Twitter.
- I don’t comment anywhere because I just send an @ on Twitter.
- I don’t email because I just send an @ on Twitter.
- I don’t write, call or talk anymore because you can see me on Twitter.
I am tired of this shit.
Twitter is great for letting me see little updates and that is it. As geeks though we couldn’t just let it be what it is could we? No way in hell you say, we must take it over and make it do everything that we already do and because we have put our time into it (read: 30 minutes max) it has taken away from doing other activities.
Fine, you don’t blog as much because of Twitter. I get that. Well you know what is going to happen? People are going to stop giving a shit about your blog and therefore you and one day you will notice and wonder what happened? Why did they stop reading me? Don’t they know I tell them everything about me on Twitter?
Same thing applies with Facebook (oh hell no, he is going to diss Facebook now?). Why follow me on my blog when you can see what I’m doing on Facebook. Just go ahead and create an account and try to locate me and then send me a friend request and if I recognize you through all the application invites I will accept you and then you can follow what I do. Easy right?
On the web you can start a site that everyone has access to. There are no rings of fire to jump through. No special registrations. They just type in the url and they can follow you. Now we want to take that luxury away because we think everyone is on Twitter? You get 140 characters to say your thoughts and you sincerely feel that is enough for some people? For all you parents out there, how annoying is it to ask your kid how school was and the only response you get is “fine”? That’s Twitter to me.
You know why Twitter is cool to you?
- You think people really care about your mini-thoughts.
- You are lazy and Twitter makes you feel like you wrote something today even though it was about 17 characters long.
- Because Scoble uses it everyone must use it.
I Twitter, Mike Twitters, Tyme Twitters and hell, even 9rules Twitters. I like following Mike and Tyme because I know what they are talking about when they are vague. I laugh at their thoughts, cry at their sorrows, roll my eyes at their bullshit and it is all because I know what they are talking about. Everyone else on Twitter? I usually have no clue and if you can’t describe it accurately in those 140 chars you are screwed, so then I just end up getting pissed off at the person. Let’s look at a random Twitter I just found on the homepage.
Prsa show over. Heading to smc in philly with hyku and kamichat. Invited to talk about radian6 social media monitoring.
I kid you not, I just read that and forgot what I wanted to say.
Anyways, Twitter is a great supplement to the many useful communication tools we have already.
- Phone
- IM
- Skype
- Postcards (WTF are those?)
- Face-to-face (shocker)
Twitter doesn’t replace any of those so don’t pretend that it should. Don’t insult the people that made you who you are (aka blog readers) by telling them you don’t have time to share thoughts because everything is on Twitter. Use Twitter to drop some insights they might not catch anywhere else, but trust me when I say you can’t live off of Twitter alone. Your shit isn’t that good.
Mike Rundle # —
If people honestly expect Twitter to replace blogs as a medium then individual Twits need to have comments. Yes, the typical response is “you can respond using the @ symbol” but that’s only if the COMMENTER has a Twitter account and 1) uses it, and 2) knows how to do the response syntax.
I guess if Twitter increased the characters twofold and added comments, it’d essentially take on the Tumblelog “market” and/or increase traffic, two things Twitter certainly cannot handle.
karmatosed # —
I certainly don’t see twitter replacing blogs. Way I see it twitter is more serves as a digital combination of the ‘water cooler’ for those of us who don’t work in offices but on our own and the IM status.
Twitter and tumblr to me are the sort of instant gratification side of things. You get out what is on your mind then and there. Is there a point to knowing what x ate for lunch? Well if you don’t know x probably not unless you have some lunch time obsession and need to know what people have to eat even if you don’t know them.
I see blog posts as something that has more thought into it - twitter for me is not about thought in the same way a blog post is - this to throws up teh issues I’ve seen when more than one person gets twitter foot in mouth syndrome by ‘just typing’. It boggles my mind people think that it could replace blogging in the current state.
As Mike said maybe with some updates but Pownce tries the comments things and for me I just felt like if I really wanted to comment I’d have that person on my IM or visit their blog - Pownce never stuck for me.
Jen # —
Most folks use Twitter because they’re self-absorbed, plain and simple.
I use mine for little quips I don’t deem worth a blog entry and to bounce ideas around. Not because I care what Wil Wheaton is having for breakfast or some shi. As always folks taking a good idea and using it the wrong way.
Scrivs # —
I don’t think adding comments would change my stance at all. That just means I have to go find them on Twitter and comment and the people who do think Twitter should replace their blogs will believe so even more now. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t blog or write great stuff then by all means allow Twitter to replace your stuff, but there are some heavyweight people throwing out the Twitter excuse a bit too often and it’s going to bite them in the ass one day.
Ozone42 # —
To me twitter is broadcast IM. I like IM. I like talking to people through nearly any medium (though I tend to suck at using the phone.)
I used to have a huge buddy list, and would chat briefly with several people a day. Nowadays I have two or three people I talk to via IM. Twitter let’s me see at a glance what people are up to (or were up to,) and allows me to broadcast the same out, and random thoughts. Things that would never be a blog entry, simple asides, random links, etc.
On a personal interaction level I find it more intimate than a blog post or forum thread, but nowhere approaching email or IM. At the same time it’s broader.
I think it’s got it’s place, but I very much agree that it’s not a replacement for other communication method. For me it’s very separate from the others, and compliments them.
Scrivs # —
Excellent points Ozone and they go along with what I was saying about Twitter being a nice complement to other communication technologies we have access to.
Cappuccino # —
I can’t seem to get into Twitter, my life is fabulously normal, and update I enter seem pointless. If my own entries bore the shit out of my, I can just imagine the effect they would have on others.
pelf # —
I don’t have a Twitter account! WooHoo! LOL.
T Dave R # —
Searched Google for WTF is Twitter, and i thought as much!
Broadcast IM makes sense to me.
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