Twitterbug for a day or serentwipity
Maybe it’s just me, but Twitter -鈥� what’s the point?
I can’t think of anything it does that Facebook doesn’t already, only better. When I re-joined recently, it wasn’t long before I had a curious little bunch in my Twitosphere, but about the most interesting thing for me was the tweetspeak.
I heard somewhere that 60 percent of neweeters lose interest within 30 days of joining. I made it to 10. I guess it all seemed a bit blah and lacked that sense of interaction that can be found within the book.
And while I may well have tapped into my inner teenage girl following Ashton Kutcher, I couldn’t give a toss if he’s feeling bored or if Perez likes sleeping with his socks on.
Snooze-fest!
And if we thought Facebook was a bit egocentric, it’s got nothing on Twitter. Narcissitwits (over)-sharing their excruciating twaddle. Who can be bothered? Well, millions in some cases.
Some apparently suffer from tweetaholism. And scarily enough, Twegosearching -鈥� the act of following yourself. Seriously, tweeple -鈥� what’s that about?
Facebook does the same with status updates, doesn’t it? Plus bookers are offered so much more than a laborious page of one-liners. Admittedly, I did enjoy following smh_news, sydstarobserver and sstarmelb. Yup, we’re on Twitter too. And I kinda got off on the immediacy of breaking-news tweets.
Thumbs up for that.
But meh, when it comes to following celebs or being followed myself, not really interested. I like my apps simple. And for me, it just became another username, another thing to maintain. And about as exciting as lawn bowls on Rohypnol.
There’s also something creepy about the fact that just anyone can follow you. My motley crew included Jessica Biel and Mary Magdalene, and I’m pretty sure neither were the real deal. Call it a hunch. But it wasn’t long before paranoia set in and I removed my pic and surname.
Is it the new social networking frontier? I doubt it. But it’s free, and still worth a look-see, particularly if you’re a bit of a celeb-head or like staying abreast of news.
I guess I was expecting to be blown away by a schmick new interface and some seriously cool cyber action. To be left aching for tweets from a twentourage of twawesome twitterflys.But instead found myself wondering what I was missing on Facebook.
‘Twas not to be.
The key difference between Facebook and Twitter (which only dawned on me a few months ago) is that by default a Tweeter does not approve followers. Facebookers on the other hand need to approve friends and therefore both social media services are quite different. This also helps explain Twitter’s relative popularity with “celebrities”.
Now, now – keep it nice.
Thanks for the comments Arty – maybe I needed to stick with it for a bit longer .. although I’m not really known for my patience, LOL. And sidebar – whatever happened to MySpace? :P
Cheers for the comments everyone!
If you like direct conversation over BS what are you doing on social networking sites Poppett ?
I will not use any of them as I prefer REAL conversations with REAL friends.
99% of the worlds creative brains are using Twitter ? God help us all !
Twitter has been around for years. It was an alternative to text messaging. Facebook isn’t the be all and end all to social networking although it is the most widely used. 99% of the worlds creative brains use twitter over Facebook. i like direct conversation personally without the BS.
Man are they real Twitter words? I bet they are. Its just the latest wank because as an application it sucks big time.
I like twitter, I don’t like MySpace, I do use Facebook, I did like IRC (some would say I used to live on it much as I do on Twitter now).
Through Twitter I have met (online and in real life) with people I never would have known about otherwise.
About a year ago I started following 3 people. I didn’t get it. I had these people on 1 (or multiple) IM services. Why would I want to chat to them in yet another application.
Now I follow over 1,000 people and have a similar number following me. I don’t read everything they all say, nor am I expected to. But every so often I glance at the window and see something interesting; part of a conversation I missed the beginning of but can go back and see; or one half of a conversation with someone I don’t yet follow that’s interesting enough to make me want to follow them as well.
Unlike IRC where you had to join multiple channels to find people you were interested in conversing with, Twitter has them all in 1 place, in 1 window. It’s a place to start a conversation, to learn about people, to find new ideas. You don’t have to continue these conversations on Twitter.
Where else but on Twitter could I have a conversation in with the likes of Stephen Fry, Myf Warhurst, Wolf Cocklin and others.
Twitter is a resource. If you need to know something, are looking for a quote, a book or a statistic and people you follow (and who follow you) are in similar fields, chances are one of them will be able to give you the answer.
If you try and use it like another IM client, Facebook or MySpace you won’t -艙get it and it won’t have value to you.
I think like with anything new curiosity gets the better of people and everyone wants to know what “twitter” is all about. I havent looked at it as yet but am sure sometime I will.
Facebook is bad enough though, really who cares if you won a game of whatever you play, who cares if you love your partner oh so much and always need to update that as your status, really it all gets a bit boring and the novelty of Facebook wore off for me very quickly .. and why oh why do people feel the need to have 100’s of friends when in the real world they dont, something I just didnt understand.