A Manifesto
I believe in Twitter. I believe people want to use it and that it is useful to them. I’m less sure of its susceptibility to monetization, but then again, I cover cameras and ramen-bots, not internet business. Still, since I’m coming down to the TechCrunch 50 conference in a few weeks, and will likely be the only person attending who does not use Twitter, I felt I should furnish an explanation. Not that I think it really matters to anyone whether I use it or not, but by striking preemptively, I’ll avoid talking myself hoarse in explaining it repeatedly to those of you I meet. I’m also curious to see if there are any other “abstwainers” (or better yet, “Tweetotallers,” either way I’ve coined a term) in the TechCrunch readership, and if so, what your perspective is.
Now, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been waiting for a chance to express myself on this (which may be why it is so very long (though my parenthetical style of writing shares the blame)), but it seems relevant enough and the timing is right. Please bear in mind that these are my own reasons for not using the service, not reasons for you to stop; I don’t mean to proselytize. I’ll start with my primary assertion: that a tweet is fundamentally valueless.
Tweets have no value
What is a tweet? It is a quantity of data which I believe to be useless, at least in this context. What can be said in 140 characters is either trivial or abridged; in the first case it would be better not to say it at all, and in the second case it would be better to give it the space it deserves. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule: “It’s a boy!” for instance, is both sufficient and worth telling everyone you know (incidentally, congratulations to CrunchGear writer Matt on the new baby), but I think we all know that the bulk of Twitter is not life-changing announcements or granules of compact wit and wisdom. Nor is it meant to be — but intentions aren’t admissible in my court, sir.
To proceed: the “this context” I mentioned above is simply that tweets are broadcast indiscriminately. I think this further devalues them; an otherwise acceptable message (“Brunch at Hi-Spot at 1!”) becomes impersonal and meaningless when it’s sent to so many. Yes, there is @ for specifying another tweet or Twitterer (would that they had called the site something else, this accursed bird-based jargon drives me mad), but that just exacerbates things. I like to think of it this way: Twitter is a bunch of friends sitting around a table, all shouting at the same time — and shouting mundanities at that. The @ function just means you shout somebody’s name before the mundanity. Everyone else still has to listen. Conversation is impossible; every exchange is telegraphic (as is, unfortunately, increasingly true in other media).
But the tweet can have a link in it, of course, which makes it more versatile — except links are subject to the same value reductions as simple text. Tweeting a link is a lot like sending it to your whole address book. If you think everyone you know should see it, it better be worth shouting from the mountaintops. How rare that is! If you like other people finding your content for you, on their schedule, this isn’t a problem, but for me it is. Add in the fact that probably half of tweets are automatically generated, and what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate anything of value.
The natural objection to this is that you choose to follow people, you don’t have it forced upon you. True! I say, then, if someone is so regularly finding content of merit, why don’t they have a blog where the content can be given context, discussion, and perhaps a preview so people aren’t going in blind? I like reading interesting blogs. I don’t want to receive links every time someone finds something they think everyone should see. Twitter just adds another layer to the equation — and I don’t like layers.
So there you have it. Every tweet out there is either unnecessary or unnecessarily abbreviated. Why would anyone want to be the owner of such an awkward little package of data?
It’s incomplete
This one might be controversial, but I embrace controversy. I make it uncomfortable. I put my hands in its back pockets. I kiss it on the lips. Twitter, therefore, I say is an incomplete and clumsy service. The halo of Twitter meta-services is indicative (in my opinion) less of the popularity of the service and more of how it falls short of the mark. When it isn’t down, Twitter provides A; people want A, B, and C.
It’s just text, sure, that’s what makes it Twitter — but simplicity isn’t the same as elegance (though the two are often seen together). URL-shortened image hosting services suggest people want to put their images right in the tweet-stream, or whatever you call it. Twitter applications like Tweetdeck (that’s one, right?) suggest that the web service is inadequate. And so on.
One could exaggerate the scope of Twitter’s service to being an alternative communication protocol at a basic level, like email or IM, and say that clients are a natural extension of that — but I think that’s disingenuous and wrong. Wrong because Twitter is meant to be simple, not fundamental. It’s a significant difference. Disingenuous because you know that’s not the case: if it were, Twitter would be better integrated with existing services.
I’m not blaming Twitter for not being what I would have liked it to be — but to jump on a service that looks like a transitional form, so to speak, seems unwise if there is no utility in it. I’ll get on at Twitter 2.0, thanks.
It replaces nothing and adds nothing
What did you do before you tweeted? It’s the social equivalent of an all points bulletin, or… a quasar or something. What did you do before when you needed to send something of little consequence or urgency to a bunch of people who may or may not want to see it? The only thing that comes to mind is skywriting. Nowadays there are more ways than I can count. Twitter is certainly a big one, but is it really better, easier, or faster than its competitors — say, Facebook’s feed? To the untrained eye (that is to say, to my eye), it looks as if Facebook has Twitter humbled in many ways (though if I’m honest, I’m not much of a Facebooker either).
Twitter is certainly more mobile — that much I grant it; Facebook should be much better at that, and the FriendFeed acquisition should sew that up pretty tight in the months to come. Twitter is certainly much better for featurephones (as opposed to smartphones), but that’s a bit of a moving target, since featurephones are getting smart and smartphones are getting cheap. If I took a picture of something crazy with my phone, I’d rather send it to Facebook than Twitter, though with Twitter it would probably reach more people, because Facebook’s feed is almost as simple, and far more robust. It’s worth mentioning here that I’m pretty much talking out of my ass, though, because I’m not an especially active user of Facebook, and I may have mentioned that I don’t use Twitter at all. But if you would forbid the argument ad ignorantium, well, there goes the entire internet.
News breaks alike on the followed and the unfollowed
As for spreading news, there I can see it might be helpful for some. Not that the same news that gets broken on Twitter couldn’t have been broken somewhere else, but Twitter news does have a certain something. A certain urgency, since it’s part of an expanding wave of retweets, and you’re expected to tweet it forward. I’m sure some of you are wondering how a blogger can get by without using Twitter (Matt Hickey is, at least). I would remind you that this article is appearing on TechCrunch, the world’s leading source of Twitter-based news. Every tweet coming into existence has to be personally approved by Mike and MG before it appears for the rest of the internet. With these guys on watch, I’ve got nothing to worry about. (They could stand to filter a bit more though)
The point is that I don’t see any particular reason to use Twitter rather than, say, relying on Facebook or RSS or even email. If it’s hot, it’ll spread one way or the other. And unfortunately, I can’t think of a less suggestive way of saying that.
Besides, (and I hate to trot out this old argument, but I think it’s applicable here) weren’t we saturated with information before Twitter came on the scene? Do we really need a constant hail of tweets in addition to the emails, IMs, messages, posts, votes, invitations, events, feeds, and god knows what else? I say thee nay! And on that point:
It’s pure vanity
This may sound a bit rich coming from a professional blogger, but I don’t like to broadcast myself. Before this post I have tried to restrict my self-reference on this blog and CrunchGear to things like “I’m more of a Canon guy, but…” or “SNES will always be superior to Genesis.” I think advertising yourself overtly or deliberately drawing attention is in poor taste, whether it’s tweeting your latest action, or having really big hair, or making everyone listen to your joke at a party. Vanity! Twitter encourages it. This is more of a philosophical point, so I won’t argue it too much here, but it’s my position that people should be saying fewer, more meaningful things, directed at people to whom they are relevant — as opposed to the equivalent of sending up a signal flare and screaming that you super hate mondays, blah!
It appeals to the reptilian part of the brain, I think. It’s an alpha male thing, having followers. When you’re broadcasting, you get to think people are paying attention, and who doesn’t like attention? But our attention is spread so thin these days that the portion devoted to something as minor as a tweet may as well be none at all. Broadcasting may console the ego, but it’s false consolation. What it is a surrogate for (meaningful attention) can’t be gotten that way.
Why do you tweet?
But enough of that. I could probably rattle off a couple more paragraphs on this and that, but I don’t want to abuse the reader’s patience. 1800 words is 1796 too many, when I could have simply pulled a Bartleby and said “I prefer not to.” You must understand, I thought it worth a thorough examining, considering TechCrunch and Twitter are joined at the hip. I console myself in that this article, though overlong to a degree you all will be revealing to me shortly, has still far fewer words than are found in an average week’s posts on Twitter.
So here’s my question to you. Why do you, or why don’t you, use Twitter? This isn’t a trap; I’m genuinely curious, since it seems to provide some things for many, many things for some, and nothing to a (talented and handsome) few. Anything so polarizing is worth discussion, so — discuss.
I only forbid one answer: “because everyone else is doing it.” That’s the same reason people wore Hammer pants.
[Update: Good to see so many responses. Very interesting. So much venom, though!]
I agree… the thrill is gone.
And what’s more, it was never there
Exactly. Twitter was always lame. I’m glad I don’t know anyone who ‘tweets’. For social entertainment I recommend http://f2bbs.com and it’s mobile version – http://mobile.f2bbs.com
Devin, as punishment for writing this long-winded and defamatory article, I command you to never write anything again unless it is 140 characters or less.
wow..finally an article on TC asking people not to tweet..loving this!
Twitter is teh BOMB!
Or why not someone else from TC write an article with title “Why I Use Twitter”
No at all, twitter is not just a social media for breaking the news and it does makes sense and spreads the communication in few seconds. it helps to develop business.. It has its own value as do emails, IM, messages, posts, votes, invitations, events, feeds. Of course its faster than other medias.
I do agree with you .. it helps a lot .. if its really not that good .. then why we are discussing this ,.. or if its really that bad . then why the hell ppl would want to hack it .. apart frm that .. its really easy to get toknow whats going on the other side of the world .. ppl tweet frm different countries .. discuss differet things .. and same things ..
And infact if you have posted here then you must be knowing that even techcrunch has an option of twitter ….
Best,
Daina
More than value for business, Twitter takes most of your time. Once you get caught in the flurry of tweets, you’re lost. There’s no escape for you. Again, if you are away from Twitter, you lose. Because people forget you if you don’t tweet regularly. It’s a catch to situation.
Devin, there was a thrill when there was actual possibility that Twitter was about connecting to people but it quickly turned into a massive broadcast/link machine (@Techcunch included in this sin). And the Featured list really did a tremendous damage.
This is also my problem with Twitter, it’s become this bullshit “marketing tool” for “social media experts”. Every day I’m followed by more and more and it’s getting beyond annoying. Techcrunch, as you said, are rightly guilty of this also.
You got it. Any social media property will end up being a spam fest. While I do not personally tweet, I have experimented with clients on tweet marketing campaigns with surprisingly good results, but those results are only short-lived, because as more and more jump on the bandwagon, it will become diluted as a marketing platform. I think the service has basically jumped the shark, if you will, when I see some ATT wireless commercial where the kids are making fun of the parents twittering and facebooking on the porch. While the commercial seems to be selling the idea of people doing that, strangely it has the opposite effect. Making those services look very uncool.
The thing about Twitter is that it started as a really cool idea — a cloud of consciousness unfolding before your eyes. Everybody’s cloud was different. It can become a cloud of spam if you let it, but you don’t have to let it.
I never follow anyone who follows me unless I know them or their tweets are of some interest to me. That’s the beauty of it — you don’t have to follow anyone.
“it quickly turned into a massive broadcast/link machine”
Exactly! I wrote a column myself like the post above, about having similar sentiments:
Twitter is a sucker’s game that only serves the needs of a tiny elite
The heart of it was that I didn’t want to be cog in that broadcast/link machine. Many people didn’t seem to grasp that point, and I got a lot of flack replying basically you-can-chat! But I don’t want to chat in little public snippets.
Twitter is low-level celebrity for the chattering class. And that’s not for me.
“So much venom, though!”
Yeah. Another celebrity aspect
.
i’ve come to the conclusion that its not techcrunch’s bloggers. its the company techcrunch its self. here we all see more blabbering on about useless crap. do you guys get paid to be this insignificant?
why couldnt you tweet this;
blah blah blah im going to a nerd fair and i want to tell everyone why im so cool for not trying to be a sheep like all of you losers! (and i still have 6 characters left)
why couldnt you just tweet that your a moron! it would have saved us all the time.
all i read was look i can use big word to describe to everyone im a idiot.
now i realize techcrunch deserves you on the payroll. not because you try to sound smart but because you waste more time.
so far 62 retweets.
What?!
your starting to get it “what?!” was that a tweet, you twat?!
is you dont like twitter you should have disabled the comment section to your worthless nonsense.
I agree with your “what?!”
The first non-pro Twitter post and you are called a “twat”. Nice… I see you did not get the free sample of Twitter Kool-aid! (me neither)
I agree with your comment (see I’m not a SOB 100% of the time)
Why do I need to have Grandma tweet me the texture of Grandpa’s poop? Don’t want to know and don’t care? Why does everyone think that they are so special to let everyone know what they are doing at that moment? (Sorry, but I was not apart of a Frat house sheep clan)
But that is just my opinion and like they say… “…everyone has one and they think theirs does not stink”
@@@@@
I like what http://www.Clasilistados.org did with their famous site
@@@@
Popa means Ass in Russian, look it up…
I’d just like to confirm that this is true, because it made me laugh. In Russian his name is Adrian Butts.
All right everyone, point and laugh!
Just for accuracy sake: Adrian Popa is a Romanian name, and it actually means Adrian the Priest.
Although I must admit that he does seem to be a total ass …
WTF!?
lolz @ “your a moron!”
Wow, Adrian is angry. About what I have no idea!
Amen Devin!
I hate to always be bad mouthing twitter but there really isn’t much good to say about it so all you’re left with is how overrated it is.
Although I think twitter is useless I like programs that measure the… volume? of people making their little shouts about this or that.
It’s like a giant cacophony of useless user input from people I don’t care to listen to. But when one collective shout starts to rise in volume above the noise it’s interesting as it works like a gauge of what people are actively taking about in real time.
Twitter is useless; but what a great source of raw social input for data-mining the “talk to of the day”. But considering the internet is for spam and porn I don’t know if it’s something worth taping into.
Its not that there is nothing good about it. Its just that whatever is there is over-hyped.
It does enable expression and real time communication.
But its further adding to the clutter and redundancy on web.
I am just waiting for the twitter buy out news…any guess by when it may happen?
You’re clearly vain enough to stick around to read and respond here all night – I would think you’d love Twitter.
After all, your many answers to these inane comments (mine included, but who said everything has to be meaningful?) are like awkwardly done Twitter replies.
Also: why are there so many people named Adrian in these comments?
Twitter helped me reach people I would have had a much, much harder time reaching (and as a consequence it has helped to speed the growth of my business).
Would I use it if I didn’t see the business value? Nope.
Twitter or no Twitter, you’re wasting your talent. Just because you’re fairly good at writing your way through a sentence doesn’t mean you’re actually saying anything interesting.
Sorry, but that really was masturbation, and I’m kinda bummed I won’t get the time back. And I didn’t skim.
You my friend, are a douchbag. Congrats.
I don’t know what to tell you if you think expression is masturbation and concern is vanity.
Twitter is highly valuable from an SEO and Aggregation standpoint. Link all of your Social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, etc) together with Applications, and remove the silo effect.
The article has some points that I agree with. There’s a lot of hype and so in the long run Twitter may not “change the world” but the model is here to stay. In the end, it may also not be Twitter that wins but the space and may be somewhere else.
But as an example, people will always follow celebrities for the same reason that they read and watch TMZ. Its also very useful from a local business model, I’ve found it particularly useful for finding deals.
Finally, the search engine is very useful. When Clinton freed the American journalists in N. Korea, Twitter was the best place I found to verify this when the news broke. Thus, throws on ads there and monetize. I defintely see the value to the service. People should question: market size, structure and potential winner not so much viability of model.
1. it’s not always abridged: you can include links to websites like this one
2. it’s not always public: you can direct message someone
3.it’s not valueless: the people in Iran protesting the elections used twitter to communicate where to go for help since hospitals betrayed them to the authorities
4.it does add something: immediacy. news spreads like wildfire. it cannot be contained. govts cannot hide what they do like before. it will get tweeted IMMEDIATELY and retweeted. saying twitter is useless is like the idiots who questioned the value of CNN, CSPAN & 24hr NEWS
I was right with you until
“saying twitter is useless is like the idiots who questioned the value of CNN, CSPAN & 24hr NEWS”
If you think these corporations (CNN & CSPAN) provide “news” then you’re ripe for picking by these same corporations that will feed you “news” or any other vital information via Twitter.
Please wake up for fux sake.
Try Woofer. It has a 1400 character MINIMUM! Http://woofertime.com
I agree so much, Twitter is just useless. I mean, I’m in the same boat as you, what is actually the point of it?
I mean, this article does a good job on explaining why Twitter isn’t manly. Although it’s meant to be funny, a lot of what it says is so true.
And there’s mathematical proof that the value of Twitter is zero. To paraphrase Douglas Adams:
The number of Tweets generated is infinite (since many/most are generated automatically, we can assume this will only continue and grow exponentially to be an infinite number). The number of valuable Tweets is finite. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero (or a number infinitesimally larger than, but never equal to, zero, or f/I=1/I).
That would be proof that the average value is zero, not the total value. Total value would be the sum of all tweets, which as you mentioned is positive and infinite (though less infinite than worthless tweets).
I agree, total vanity. I may spend too much time on Facebook occasionally, but I’ll be damned if I think that all of my friends care if I update my status several times a day. How is Twitter any different from that?
Interesting, then, that I was alerted of your article via Twitter. Would you argue that the 140 characters that led me to your article were useless?
It will be interesting to see how things play out once the Ashton Kutcher and other celebs are all tweeted out…and if things play out as rumored with major brands being charged for their time on Twitter. If that happens, people are going to start questioning the efficienty, opportunity cost and ROI of being entrenched on twitter.
i tweet because i think information is dispersed quicker there. i write on average a blog a day, but take some vacations. i find a weakness in twitter other than what u have mentioned.
if i write a blog, put up its link, and im being followed by a person who follows 700 other guys, my tweet will disappear as soon as it arrives, and only be seen when you access my profile. in effect, my article might not be seen by many. facebook, however, has helped drive traffic to my blog. still starting out, so that’s what i need. feedback, criticism, and traffic. and facebook achieves it more i think. u have valid reasons in your post about how twitter falls short, but for the time being i would like to use every avenue i have to get my articles read, my writing style fixed, and get my topics to be more appealing. twitter helps somewhat, so ill take it!
i mean to say a post a day. thanx
Hey everyone! Twitter was just a joke. A prank to see who would fall for a useless service that only narcissists could love. But the funniest thing is, it stuck. Ahhhh!
Just like Daylight Savings Time.
Dude, tweets are valuable because they stay true to one point, and don’t let users ramble on. I can see why Twitter wasn’t working out for you.
HAH. It’s funny because he used a lot of words.
and today’s Stating The Obvious awards goes to…
BING!
“ya…it’s funny cause it’s true” – Dane Cook
Are you seriously giving Dane Cook credit for “it’s funny ’cause it’s true?” I don’t know if they originated it, but it was on The Simpsons in ‘91. Chances are they didn’t get it from a 19-year-old Cook.
I think Devin must be an ENFJ which means his Myers briggs T shirt says “Articulate, articulate, articulate”!
This is funny, cause the way i heard of this article was through a tweet.
me too.
Me three.
Me number 775 (because I RT it (using the coined term as the highlight) – As journalist in Brazil, I use Twitter to reach blogs like yours which I would take a little – too much – longer to achieve if not for Twitter… and other very good sources of information. Believe me! It´s not only a vanity thing. I think you have a good point but, there is a good point for poeple of Iran and Cuba – when they have only Twitter as a source of information to show what others cannot… and it can open up a seminar on the subject…
Me too! From @problogger.
I didn’t.
Well i did
well i didnt.
same
Not very convincing and logical devils advocate play
So Twitter is valuable because it’s short and focused and doesn’t let users ramble on? Wait, isn’t it supposed to be a SOCIAL tool? Doesn’t socializing include communicating with others in your own personal way? What would the world be like if we all just got to the point and didn’t ramble on? There were would basically be zero forms of entertainment or interesting conversation. And lets not be naive about this, Twitter was intended to be used as a form of entertainment or social communication – NOT advertising your latest product.
Tweets are for ADD culture who do not have the attention span to read 1800 words. OMG, 1800 words, is that like a book?
You have to wonder, since A.D.D. is on the increase. This article was a pleasure to read though, Devin is a weaver of words.
How do I star that?
I think Twitter is a form of entertainment. I question its’ value as a “news” or other service.
I use twitter because it’s the only way I could find out about this blog: https://twitter.com/MarkClayson/status/3368828895
Like WWF is a sport?????
world wildlife federation is a sport? Get your rifle!
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is not a sport.
Doh….
Lol..I’m so tired of rants from people that don’t “get” Twitter. Just don’t use it, then.
You should have read it. Or at least the last 2 paragraphs that summarized what the point of the post was.
I did. I’ve heard it all before. Anyhoo….why do I tweet? I tweet because I’m too lazy/uninteresting to write blogs. That’s it.
And I like to follow interesting ppl. Not ppl I know in particular, but them also..although that’s what facebook is for. Oh..and changing status too often on facebook will piss ppl off.
Also, I look for tweets about my company as well as watch trending topics….
I like it. Sorry
See? Now you’re being productive.
I feel dirty now
Lol..I’m so tired of rants from people that don’t “get” people who don’t “get” Twitter.
They are not insulting you or your being…. Step down from the table, you are still a good person.
I love this comment.
lol just tired of ppl demanding me to “justify myself” for using a service. He’s doing the exact thing that he thinks is annoying himself.
Hey, I said very specifically that these are simply my own personal reasons for not using twitter. I think they’re good reasons and you’re free to disagree. Remember, the first thing I said was that I believe in twitter and I believe people really do find it useful – just not me.
Thank you so much for writing this. Twitter is contributing mightily to the further retardation of people everywhere. You know the type of people who would just as soon pass out rather than read a paragraph.
I believe twitter is more of a “link to” news site. Meaning that most of my 140 characters are usually used for a hyperlink to some information I believe is useful (to me at least, and therefore, hopefully useful to others). I was a big opponent of twitter until I started using it regularly and following the people that I find interesting.
Also, often times the news I get on twitter comes to me faster than the main stream news sites. Considering the availability of information today, this is probably one of the biggest selling points for others as well.
I tweet because well, I really don’t tweet. I read tweets and follow the trends. I like the fact I can see what’s the latest thing going on; and search real-time deeper. I like the fact, I can get first person views on things. I like following celebrities, CEOs, etc. to see how their lifestyles are. I follow all my friends and I can know exactly what’s going on by watching their tweets and what they plan to do that night or what’s going on during the week.
I have TechCrunch on sms alerts to my phone for any tweets. I feel like I am always in the loop.
James F.
Owner, TwitterBackground.com – Free Twitter backgrounds
Kind of makes sense you would be interested in what is going on with twitter, since you have a twitter-focused web site. Have you received any VC funding yet??
Global poll being taken:
Do you use Twitter? – Answer it at http://qulse.com/q.jsp?id=18
Twitter is cool and all. But i cringe when i hear some one say it on TV. Like that old idiot on Pardon the Interuption. He contined to say, “Do you tweet”. I just wanted to punch him in the face. ughhhhh
I am so sick and tired of CNN’s Rick Sanchez and Josh Levs acting like Twitter is the greatest thing since pants….if I hear Rick reference the Twitter board one more time…
Are you guys all part of the same speed reading club?!
Well ironically, since I follow TC on twitter, I got to reading right away!
Same here
Who wants to read 1930 words by someone we never heard of before about ‘why I don’t tweet???’
Of course we just skim read it.
First of all I tweet, and I know why I do that.
However that don’t stop me from arguing that you can be so “plain white”. What you skim read was an article explaining some points why twitter has it problems.
And I must tell you I agree with some, not all, but with some of them. Because rather than say “I don’t tweet”, he really explained why.
Twitter shouldn’t be a cult and we must see it less bright side.
My 2 cents
Found your post on Twitter…,
Without it your readership would be so weak dude.
Uhhhh yeah, I’m pretty sure TechCrunch has had a sizable following for much longer than Twitter has been around.
In fact, it goes the other way. I didn’t start using Twitter until TechCrunch started reporting so heavily on it.
Tom,
Don’t you know about things like RSS and Google Reader? It’s really pathetic when someone in the Internet era says, that Twitter is the only way you can find a blog post.
Amen!
+1000 seriously people
Are you kidding? Did you think we Tech Crunch readers actually read the articles? We look at your pictures and deduce the point of your post from them and them alone… psssss… read… HAHAHA…. anything more than 140 characters is just boring.
I use twitter as a way to communicate with some of my internet only friends. People i may not be comfortable giving my cell number to. I can talk back and forth this way.
Sure its like the facebook status updates, but i like being able to do my updates and talk to people, from my phone.
Up until recently facebook didn’t support tmobile.
Still, i use it for what it is. Status updates. Just an alternative to facebook, really.
This man has very good points. The analogy of friends sitting at a table is spot-on.
Before twitter though, I didn’t have any sort of connection to the internet other then IM and forums. Now I feel more connected, I think that is all that twitter does. It makes you feel more connected, and that’s it.
It’s good for developers that can quickly say “Game is out on d/m/y, get it!”, or “Patch is out now, go play [game]“.
But that is nothing that you cannot get with a mailing list, if you are interested in that game, right?
True.
Ding!
Twitter will have to scale up and compete with Facebook. It doesn’t stand a chance otherwise. They need to sell to Google within 6 months or its over.
Another Monday, another smug, disconnected “manifesto” from a guest contributor that no-one’s either heard of or cares about. *yawn*
is TechCrunch dying Mike?
Nobody cares about this random guy’s half-baked opinions. C’mon Mike, would you even read this POS your site is publishing?
And yet you assume a legion of Twitterer’s really care enough about your opinions to make what you have to say any more worthwhile than what he has to say?
That’ s exactly his point. On here, you can choose to read or not to read. You come to TechCrunch by choice. And if you’re an avid Cruncher, you can selectively avoid Twitter articles if you don’t really care what’s going on with Twitter. The news and articles are targeted at people who chose to be targeted by them.
With Twitter – you’re standing up in an auditorium full of people who came to talk about a billion different things and telling them you had Starbucks for breakfast. What do you think the person of people that really care what you had for breakfast are in that room?
And furthermore, let’s not forget what a lot of people are saying is the best benefit of Twitter – it’s concise, focused and you get to the point. So in the event you actually find someone who cares that you had Starbucks – well Twitter isn’t really meant for you to carry on a meaningful conversation with them about your mutual interest. Unless of course every dialog exchange is less than 140 characters. Much less if you’re new found friend has a long name.
What is it exactly about this post that provokes you so much?
Twitter and Facebook aren’t mutually exclusive; Facebook is something you have private lists of friends who you both agree to follow, with a complete profile and it stores your pictures and so on and so forth.
Twitter, on the other hand, gives you a profile with a 1-line “bio”, a location, and a display picture (of which, most don’t even appear to be of the person who owns the account). Twitter is what RSS feeds should have been. Pure vanity? Twitter is much more anonymous than Facebook is, and the people who follow you often don’t know you. You were found by them searching for a particular topic.
In the end this is yet another blogger flailing about Twitter because he doesn’t understand it.
1. I don’t care why you don’t tweet.
2. What’s “not” right for you “is” right for millions.
3. Forming a blanket denial of value to a globe changing communication tool makes you look like a n00b.
4. You want to tweet in the worst way. Admit it.
What’s right for us that use Twitter still isn’t exactly right for billions. And there are plenty of people that really don’t have anything interesting to say in 140 characters in the first place.
If I had one reason why I wouldn’t use Twitter, it’s likely because I’m like most people in the world and not a “social media expert”.
Globe changing communications tool? Since when is the ability to post 140 characters of mindless minutiae that important?
Twitter is a guestbook script mixed with an LJ friends list. In fact, an LJ friends list provides all the same functionality without the hassle of having to go to a dedicated site with limited utility.
I use it for the network. Here at work I have 10 or 15 very smart engineers to bounce ideas off of and learn from. On Twitter I have thousands…
I’m with J.D. Mullin. I’m a teacher. In the staff room I have a handful of colleagues to work and collaborate with. On Twitter I have a global community of educators. It’s not a cacophonous torrent of babble – OK, some of it is, but I can choose whose babble gets through to me – it’s a filtered stream of knowledge and feeds.
For a start, Twitter, blogs, etc are not mutually exclusive. Each has its use.
Second, not everyone has the time or inclination to read your 1,930 words of flamebait, or blog entries of similar lengths. Sometimes all you need IS a 140 chars summary.
Third, tweets are both searchable AND disposable – I’m sure we all have hundreds of rss feeds / bookmarks / etc we mean to read and never get around to. Tweets give you a feel of what’s going on without having to stop whatever else you are doing.
How do you know it’s flamebait if you haven’t read it?
I did skim read it – I read the opening sentence of each paragraph, and scanned the rest to see if any interesting words stood out.
This attention span is why it will be very difficult for Twitter to be monetized successfully.
I’m curious Fritz if you read anything in it’s entirety if it is over 140 characters?
yes, but not 2000 word long flamebait
Where do you even get the nerve to criticize an article you didn’t take the time to read in its entirety?
that’s funny Fritz, i read the first word of each of your posts and then skimmed them for ‘interesting words’ but unfortunately for you I didn’t listen to you either – the interesting words I was looking for was ‘buick’, ‘plum’ and ’superfluous’.
Pity, I’d have paid attention to you – random internet voice – if you’d known to sate my particular tastes. Alas you have failed.
Moving on.
sorry, most of us HAVE to skim read a 2000 word article, life’s too short
Fritz- Life’s too short for 2000 words? Really? If you took the time to comment on this 3 times now, you could have at least read it. Words aren’t interesting. Ideas are. And they won’t stand out unless you take the time to understand them.
And what the hell is a flamebait?
“Tweets give you a feel of what’s going on without having to stop whatever else you are doing.”
This exactly. I can jump in and out of my Twitter stream whenever I have a minute. If you get over the fact that you’ll never read every tweet that comes in, it becomes extremely time efficient.
Love it!
It’s funny that people get an ego boost from the number of follower…ahem, many of which are not real people. So its sort of like having a conversation with an answering machine, with no one really listening on the other end. (Do you really think 3,000+ people find you interesting?)
I found this through TechCrunch’s Twitter stream. I probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
There, the tweet has value.
Same here. I found techcrunch THROUGH twitter. I only get alerted about a new blog, through twitter.
how old are you?!
Way to make a point Devin! Because only people of a certain age bother to get some news through Twitter.
Somehow the ‘this isn’t a trap’ statement (Yes I read your near incessant ramble) seems hollow at this point.
Also, take a class on precis writing. Using skills I learned in 6th grade, I could rewrite your post in 650 words or less.
Maybe I should have added a winky face to my comment. Not everything I say is deadly serious and to the point.
Age has nothing to do with it. I’m 33. I’m a programmer. I’m a nerd. I hang out with other nerds.
And you know what? If it wasn’t for a Twitter post, I would never have seen your article. Why? Because TechCrunch is, at it’s heart, a blog with lots and lots of tech articles on it, and I don’t read those types of blogs. In fact, I actively avoid them.
See, you’re thinking that people have some list of sites that they go to every day and read the new content there. Or perhaps they use a feed aggregation mechanism to do much the same thing. You know what? I simply don’t have that kind of time.
Instead, I use Twitter (and more and more lately, FriendFeed) to follow people with similar interests as myself. From them, I gather links, and following those links lets me see interesting things from the entire web, instead of just that blog segment I happen to be subscribed to.
I’m more interested in what other people think are interesting, not in what gets posted on “random blog X”.
Blogs started off as a way to syndicate continuing content. They’ve now become, to me, identical to newspaper websites. A list of random articles to be consumed not as a whole, but article by article.
Quite frankly, the traditional blog is dead. Syndication and aggregation is a failed experiment. It gave us feeds and it gave us a lot of really good news publishing software. But now it has to evolve, because there’s too many separate sites to follow all the time.
Twitter and FF and FB (to a lesser extent) serve as a really decent filter.
@Devin why is that a relevant question?
How long have you been using social web stuff like twitter, blog-comments, facebook, etc would seem to be a reasonable question.
Sorry, folks, what I meant was really “how long can someone have been present on the internet that Twitter, a relatively recent phenomenon, is their primary source of content?”
I’ll answer that. I’ve been present on the internet since it’s birth, programming software since 1969, and now, I too use twitter as a primary index onto the world. The word ‘index’ is key. Of course you need to follow links and do searches and read more content, but twitter is the portal.
When people write “you don’t get it”, don’t take it personally. You can’t get it until you have worked with it for a while. Looking at it from the outside is like looking at a neural net and declaring a priori that nothing so trivial can ever amount to much. Wrong. The a posteriori experience turns out to be amazingly rich, but only if you train the neural net, only if you tune your list of following, only if you really work at it.
Truthfully, I’m looking forward to something much better, probably built on Google wave. But meanwhile, I have learned more than I would have imagined by experiencing the evolution of something so extremely primitive as twitter.
BTW, I agree; a few months of disciplined twitter use, and you would have written your blog with half the words, making every one of your points, only even more effectively.
And I too found this blog via twitter.
Well said.
well said, i have request to follow you on twitter.
Interesting, thanks for replying. But I’m not interested in being more concise if I don’t have to. I certainly could have written this post much shorter. I could have gotten it in under 300 or 400 words, easy – but I felt it was worth explaining myself at length. And what better way to express my own incompatibility with the service?
Yeah same.
I believe no other mechanism connects bloggers to the readers as good as twitter does.
There lies it’s value.
why do you blog?
It’s a living….
but for my personal blog, it’s more like an external memory for things I’ve found which are big enough to be worthwhile in themselves, but small enough to be put in a brief post.
Each week, @sparrw sends me an email with my tweets. An imperfect but decent “external memory for things I’ve found which are big enough to be worthwhile in themselves” but too small to be put in a brief post. Kind of like Delicious without the tagging.
Devin, where is your personal blog?
you asked for it -
http://coldewey.tumblr.com/
Congratulations, you are being “followed”!
You’ll regret it! Just wait until my next 18th-century vocabulary post.
that’s actually sounds interesting to me, perhaps that’s why I am in agreement.
Pop culture has 2 rules:
1. It gravitates toward the mediocre middle
2. It needs a shepherd to tell the herd where to go and to broadcast. Twitter is the perfect broadcast medium, in fact the limited reply opportunity means that it’s almost like a TV.
I follow too many blogs to RSS or feed into my inbox thus Twitter is my medium for news consumption, for weeding through all information in the most efficient and quickest manner possible. I could care less about people reading my tweets. Though it is nice to see a bit of the personality behind many of the news sources etc. out there.
Devin- interesting take. I like the immediacy of the medium and the IDEA of real time search is very compelling. But mostly, I liked the fact that you used both Melville and MC Hammer in one post.. .
Why do so many of you give a shit about what this guy writes? Him using twitter doesn’t have jack to do with any of us.
You still felt the need to read and comment on it. And do you only care about things that have to do with yourself?
Agree that Twitter is not for lazy people. If he wanted to, he could have expressed his main point:
“What can be said in 140 characters is either trivial or abbreviated; in the first case it would be better not to say it at all, and in the second case it would be better to give it the length it deserves.”
as
“What’s said in 140 char is either banal or abridged; if the former, better not say at all & if the latter, better extend it appropriately.”
Voilá, 140 characters as in:
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
abridged is a better word indeed, i’m going to change that – but the rest I’m going to give the space it deserves.
Declan
I am also a sceptic like you.
agree that it is NOT complete, but internet itself is not complete yet.
am not ‘fighting’ for twitter, but my observation is that without twitter, I did not give 2nd thoughts to ANY blog, and did not even write one (despite I am in technology/telecoms to be precise)..
So, like facebook, I was going to advise/help a firm and they had ‘widgets’ on it, but I could not possibly comment until/I created an a/c and start using it a while.
I am curious also to see your thoughts after finally you start using it.
good post.
@GarethWong
Sorry I meant Devin
another twitter ‘problem’ is that, we tend to react/and post too quickly (vs me previously never wrote a blog/comments)
apologies.
Didn’t want to sound like a jerk, but unlike many people that think that Twitter is part of the English-language death squad, I reckon that it actually makes you look for the Thesaurus, which is a good thing.
Oh no not at all, I totally hear you. I love thesauri. But I think few people really do that reach… instead choosing to drop vowels or something.
I predict that this whining about twitter, is because MICROSOFT is buying Twiiter!
Is that it, Googlentologists?
Well written. And just as many people care why you’re not fond of Twitter as there are people who care why MG ogles over Twitter. (Sorry, MG, it’s true, but we accept you.) I happen to like reading both.
I’ve felt since I joined Twitter that each individual turns their Twitter experience into whatever mechanism they need within the Social Media/Social Networking arena.
If one is just looking for random chatter between friends, well, there it is.
If one wants to receive instant news updates, there it is.
If one just wants to spam the crap out of their site, well, there are a few hundred sods out there that will follow them, and there it is.
I like to keep it a mix. I have my random chatter, I get all kinds of news I didn’t bother to expose myself to before, and once in a while I get to spam myself in some way (your vanity clause.)
I like Twitter. I don’t care if every one is or is not using it. I’m there, and will be when people move on.
I use twitter instead of RSS, which I never really got. All the Techcrunch etc. posts pop up when they’re posted, so I can read the headline and follow the link, or not. The people I choose to follow are generally intelligent or funny people and it’s an easy way for me to keep up with what they’re doing, while getting a small sense of what they might be like in real life.
When I’m asked, as I often am, why I tweet, I say that its an simple, efficient and entertaning communications service that allows you to construct eccentric networks of people who might be interested in whatever it is you tweet about. Twitter is easy to use (though its utility is harder to see immediately) and, at least for me, incredibly flexible. I can talk about business stuff or personal stuff simply list the stuff on my desk. (I’m a book reporter).
I keep friends informed about whatever (yes, friends often care about the oddball stuff we do each day) and I add professional stuff to keep my professional readers somewhat interested. And of course, you don’t have to follow me if you don’t think my stuff is interesting.
I don’t know if Twitter will ever make money. I hope so. Its useful and fun. You mention blogging but Twitter seems a great introduction to blogging, to posting information on a daily basis. I could go on but I won’t.
The great thing about twitter and constructing a network of folks that you follow, is that you can create a twitter feed that alternates between the voices of your friends and the voices surrounding public issues that you care about. And you can access them quickly and easily and respond or not. Short is better, at least some of the time.