Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot
Twitter has obviously been around for a little while now but it’s just starting to get popular with the non-tech savvy masses, and so has been figuring prominently on my list of annoyances lately. While I think the core concept is great in several contexts (short, quick messages broadcast to an audience), I don’t see how it’s original or anything to get too excited about. And let’s not forget that this whole “new” medium is dependent on a service with a horrible track record when it comes to reliability (though it seems to be improving).
To be fair, it seems like Twitter is going through what most social networks tend to experience: you start with a good concept, go through some growing pains, and then eventually you’re overwhelmed by self-important people with too much time on their hands. I like the idea of receiving announcements and important notes from sources that I select myself, but I can do this easily with RSS (which is a standard that can be applied by anyone, anywhere), and I certainly don’t need inane realtime updates about someone’s day. The bottom line for me is that I don’t care – the same reason why I don’t read your LiveJournal or check out your MySpace.
Here’s a video that illustrates these ideas better than I ever could (Toronto Mike, this is for you):
Toronto Mike
April 17th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Why are you alienating your only reader?
I’m 100% of the Bonetree Blog traffic, and proud of it. I think I’ll tweet about that now…
Donna Vitan
April 17th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
How is this service even beneficial? I really don’t see what the big deal is with Twitter. Daniel, your video share is spot on! Thanks for sharing.
Daniel
April 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Haha, well played, but not exactly true. 60% of my traffic comes from Google, and unless you’re searching for information on the Cervelo S1, integrating Mantis and Subversion or how to hack Gallery2 to use your Gmail account to send e-mail, you’re well below the 100% mark ;)
And as for your tweet/twit/whatever, any traffic is good traffic :p
Daniel
April 17th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
See? Only reader my ass! haha
Toronto Mike
April 17th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Donna doesn’t count. She’s part of the Bonetree conspiracy.
Jason Rundell
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
The only reason why I read this was because Donna said ‘twat’ on her facebook status.
To me, your blog post here is just the same as one of the ’self-important people’ on Twitter tweeting about their shitty day.. only they wasted 5 seconds of my time with a 140 characters. You just wasted about 10 minutes. Luckily I’ve already watched the video.
When you realize that all comments in the Blogosphere and Twittershpere and the Facesphere and all the other damn ’spheres don’t really mean diddly-squat on our lives, and you stop taking this shit so seriously, you start to learn how to have fun with it.
Daniel
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Jason,
I was waiting for someone to say something to like this, and your comment made me chuckle. Clearly, my blog is a personal platform for me to talk about stuff that *I* care about, so it’s easy to just say “B-b-b-but you’re doing the same thing!”, but there are a few differences that make this a bit more worthwhile (in my opinion). For starters, it’s not about time. It takes me about a second to read up to 140 characters – it’s about value. I slag Twitter to anyone who asks me about it, but I wouldn’t necessarily post my opinion about it. The only reason I posted this was because I thought the video was hilarious, and I wanted to share it with whoever it is that reads my blog (though there aren’t many of you out there). The value in this post is not my opinion about Twitter.
Secondly, I didn’t poke and prod you to come and read my blog (I don’t even know who you are), and you didn’t have to sign up for some arbitrary service in order to do so. I didn’t waste your time here, you wasted it yourself.
Third, what kind of value can you get out of 140 characters? With a blog, if you’re interested in the topic, you can come and read about it. It may or may not be worth it, but the potential to be informative and/or useful is much higher than a tweet, and everyone obviously knows this because Twitter is mostly inane chatter. Don’t get me wrong, the idea has some great applications, but everyone is getting a boner about Twitter right now and I’m just like “Why would I ever want to follow you on this stupid service?”.
And finally, this blog isn’t full of opinion pieces, or me talking about how great I am or presuming to think that people care about my daily, up-to-the-minute “status”. This blog is my attempt to share interesting things that I learn, to have a laugh and to give back to the web – I’ve found so much value in content written by people all over the world and this is my attempt to do the same.
Who’s taking anything seriously?
Jason Rundell
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I feel any argument between Twitter vs. Blog is moot because there is value in some Tweets and there is value in some Blogs, just as there is no value in some Tweets and no value in some Blogs.
With Twitter you have the choice to un-follow the people that just give inane chatter. Friend or not, if I find your tweets inane I unfollow.
By blogging about it, you realize that you’re just adding to the blood that is engorging the Twitter Boner, right?
Daniel
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 pm
I like to think of myself as the erectile dysfunction of Twitter.
Jason Rundell
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 am
LOL!!