Or does it?
Throw the question “What do you think of Twitter” to a room full of geeks and you’ll soon realize that Twitter’s one of those unique creations that you either love to death or just can’t stand hearing about. There’s no fence sitting when it comes to Twitter!
Recent suggestions that they just scored $15 Million in additional VC funding got me thinking - are these Venture Capitalists crazy or is there something in this thing called Twitter?
Here’s my take on it…
Twitter is nothing more than a waste of bandwidth, and here’s why:
- You must be egotistical or insecure or both!
Get over yourself. Nobody really cares about what you’re up to, or how you’re feeling, or what brand of jeans you just bought. Your Twitter pals are too busy typing their own BS to read yours. It doesn’t make you popular, it just makes you sad. Stop typing and get some fresh air!
- It sucks you into a false sense of security!
While you might think you’re having a conversation with a close group of friends, in reality you’re shouting out to the entire world. I’ve seen too many work colleagues and friends tweet something that has come back to bite them, and hard.
- It’s a time waster!
Just think about the valuable time you’re wasting twittering, setting up tiny urls, and watching others. You only live once. How else you could you spend those hours? What are you really getting out of it?
- It never works anyway!
Downtime - yeah we all know, Twitter is a message system trapped in a CMS. It’s widely documented the road twitters got ahead of them, and I hope they can turn it around. But nevertheless, if we had the sort of downtime Twitter does, we would have put a set of concrete boots on our sys admin and threw him in a river long ago.
Then I started thinking about the flip side. Perhaps there is something in this after all …
- Granted, Twitter is one of the fastest ways to spread the word
From the perspective of a Marketing Manager, there’s no faster way to spread the word and see what people think about your products. Just look at the pages of tweets for our current Photoshop giveaway. 10 times better than formal press feeds I’ve paid a fortune for in the past.
- And it’s not all crap if you know where to look
With little energy, and the right group of people, you can tap into to an everlasting news real of stuff your interested in. What’s even better is you’re not stuck listening to the full story, you read the tweet, if you’re interested, go from there.
- And let’s face it, there’s a voyeur in us all
You can’t deny that dropping in on conversations can be fun, especially when they’re talking about someone or something you know well. It kind of puts you in a crazy left of centre perspective which I think is kind of cool.
So where does this leave us? What’s the future for Twitter?
Personally I think it’s a fad that will go away soon enough – something bigger and better is sure to replace it before they get their act together. But I can’t wait to see how they spend their $15 million. Imagine the parties!
May 29th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I feel it’s a fad only in the same way MSN Messenger and Jabber fads - to a large extent, it’s just a different way of communicating, and a useful one at that, but definitely limited in scope.
Granted, it took me a while to jump on the bandwagon, but I’ve come to appreciate that it is used by different people in different ways - I use it to broadcast and discuss things with a relatively close network of friends and acquaintances. I don’t go around following every mover and shaker - the main purpose for me is to nurture the weak social bonds. Two links that I think express this take on Twitter very nicely are Ambient Intimacy and Maxine on Henry Jenkins.
But everyone uses Twitter differently - and most of the items in both lists above come down to the users, not the system.
(These thoughts would be more cohesive if it wasn’t almost 2am where I am at the moment)
May 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. I tried twittering but just didn’t see the point. Contrary to the web developer stereotype too, most of my friends ARENT in the industry so they’re not geeky enough to use something like that.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I’ve been reading so much about Twitter lately and up until a few days ago never really saw the point, but I saw a screencast about ways to use Twitter which highlighted its potential to alert you to news that you might not find out about (or at least not find out until much later), so I signed up and that’s pretty much my main focus for using it so far.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
As an avid listener to the TWIT network of podcasts Ive been blasted with Twitter speak by Leo Laporte, Scoble, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis and the rest of the technorati. There isnt an episode goes by without ego stroking from someone about Twitter this and Twitter that.
I can see the logical reason to use it if you are unemployed and sit at home doing nothing all day, but what is the point in a 140 character byline about you running out of toothpaste - missing the bus - sleeping in - what topping you’ve got on your pizza …..
From a PR point of view then yes its great, as is any way of getting your stuff out there. John C Dvorak uses it to great advantage to draw people to his blog which in turn makes Google adsense renevue. You and me? Why bother, think of the time you’ll waste and how you could use that for your own entertainment or better yet - to make money.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I hope $14.9 of that $15 million goes into making it reliable. Not 5 9s, but something approaching decent modern standards would be cool.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
The simple fact that people subscribe to someones twitter should be proof otherwise,
I think this mostly describes your Twitter friends, not Twitter. ;-)
False. Plenty of people, me included, do not make their twitters public. Surely you must know about Twitters privacy options?
This is their fault, not Twitters. Twitter can’t be held responsible for people not caring enough about their privacy to make their Twitter friends-only.
This surely is a personal choice. For you it is a time waster, for me it’s not.
I live in an area without a web dev community. Twitter helps me connect to the community outside of blogs and conferences. Alot of noise for sure, but helps me anyways :)
May 30th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I like how junjun completely ignored the second part of the article.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:05 am
I used Twitter alot and have made a good amount of friends through it, have reconnected with some high friends and have gained a new fans for my blog. So I disagree with you on the “it sucks” part. Now there are some who use it incorrectly and they are the blight of Twitter but overall I think it’s a great idea.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I can see a lot of potential in the service.
They just need to develop a USB urine analysis tool to add to all the mindless activity reporting, and they’d have a perfect online parole system — saves people from having to report to police stations. Perhaps a locked wrist band device that emits a piercing siren if the wearer hasn’t documented a coffee or toilet break within the previous two hour period?
Has to be money in that.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:49 am
junjun where some of that stuff that you post is true, is it not also true that if you want to get the word out about something you may be working on that you want to make some money on. I am not going to pretend to know anything about twitter, because as of now all i know has been posted above, but from a marketing standpoint you can’t get the best of both worlds.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Love him or hate him, Loren Feldman hits the nail on his head with this video.
May 31st, 2008 at 12:50 am
I’m to much of a cynic to really understand what the point is, but I’ve never been all that into social networking in the first place. The mere fact that they are making money and people are using it is enough to convince me that there is some point of it.
What’s the point of TV or movies? There really is none, people still do it and talk about it, nothing wrong with that.
This blog post like so many other site point posts is like reading your average “Will Brad and Angelina get back together!?” article. I’m starting to wonder why I even subscribe when half the time you are just whining about social networking, it works get over it.
What did I learn from reading this article? Nothing, at all.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:50 am
This reads like hater-speak. 3/4 reasons you state for twitter-suckiness can be applied to, oh, 99.999repeat% of all blahgs. Including mine, granted. Is “Twitter” just in the headline of this article to attract attention?
June 1st, 2008 at 4:04 am
Twitter is a tool, not a trend, nor a fad. Just like Myspace and Facebook are tools. They help us connect. In the context of social tools, Twitter provides the lowest barrier in terms of commitment. Typing 140 characters is the only task you need to do in Twitter unlike other social communication tools, there are many other vectors of communication to manage.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I’m a user of Twitter and in fact am a fan of social networks. I like twitter because it integrates smoothly with other networks (Like facebook) and I’m using it now to update my status through all networks or update my friends about my new blog posts.
I can see that it gonna be a trend not only a website, cause recently I found another website that doing the same thing but in more attractive way which is (http://www.plurk.com/) online journal still under enhancements but it’s really cool and I think that many other websites will arise soon like (www.ping.fm)
It’s nice, quick and simple way for sharing the news and updates quickly
June 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
You would have to be a bit of a twit to use twitter … sorry it was sticking out like dogs thingies so couldn’t resist *sigh* I’ll get my hat and coat.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Shayne, your negative points about Twitter show how much you really don’t understand about it. (While I understand you should get credit for your positive points.) Let me explain myself:
1) “Nobody really cares about what you’re up to, or how you’re feeling, or what brand of jeans you just bought.” Totally untrue. Some people (many people) do care about these things. Twitter really isn’t much different than blogging, only shorter. If this were true, there wouldn’t be advertisements on the sides of buses and taxis. The truth is, people do care what others think. Also, many people on Twitter aren’t talking about worthless things. (Hint: I found a link to your article on Twitter. Are you saying that was worthless?)
2) “While you might think you’re having a conversation with a close group of friends, in reality you’re shouting out to the entire world.” Of course! That’s the point!! Duh! Twitter allows me to meet people that know my friends and reach out to them. That cannot be done easily through blogging. Twitter is more about social networking to me than blogging.
3) “Just think about the valuable time you’re wasting twittering, setting up tiny urls” So what you’re saying is that my finding a link to your article on Twitter was a waste of time? Seriously? Many of the links I find to great design resources come from my Twitter friends. But besides the point, not everyone is going to be using Twitter the same. This doesn’t make them any less significant than me.
While I do hope Twitter works out the bugs in the system, it hasn’t been so bad that I wanted to quit. I think your points are silly given the fact that I found your article on Twitter. Too bad you’re missing the boat on this one!
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I used to use twitter some but never got the point of it all. Mostly people posting stupid crap. Case in point the top tweets now. http://www.tweetdujour.com