Twitter is one of those semi-recent crazes sweeping the techno-elite across the Internet. It seems to be continually gaining steam as more and more of the "Names to Know" jump on board and start to broadcast their lives across the tubes. Like the blog, it's a soapbox from which you can broadcast every little thought to as many people as are willing to click and read.
I get blogs. I get podcasts, video casts, live video feeds, live audio feeds, myspace, facebook and linked in. But I don't get Twitter.
Why?
- It's yet another social service to track...
I'm on Facebook, I have blogs, I'm on LinkedIn, I participate in communities. By anyone's measure I'm very much "out there" and visible to the world. Why do I need to add a new status update tool to the list of things I have to maintain, track and update?
- I can't figure out why anyone would care...
Who needs a constant feed on what their friends are doing, summarized in under 140 characters per message? Do I really need to have up-to-the-minute information on how my friend Dan is enjoying his soup when he's out to dinner with his wife? Do I care that someone is bored and staring at their wall hoping for something exciting to happen?
- I can't figure out what value it adds...
How does this tool make my life better or easier? Does it meet any need I had before the tool existed? Twitter seems like a munge of Instant Messaging & a forum if you want to argue the conversation angle of it. Or IRC with the logs posted to the web.
- It seems more about ego than utility...
When I see what the "top" bloggers are using Twitter for, I see mostly just links to what they've written recently, or conferences they're attending. I can get all of that with an RSS feed from their page. Most folks I've seen are using it to go "Yay, look at me!" instead of engaging in conversation, or disseminating useful, unique information.
Do I have a Twitter account? Yes. Will I continue to use it? For a while, if only to try and figure out why everyone loves it so much. Want to follow my ego-driven exploits? Then "Follow" me. I'm sure it'll be at least twice as boring as I imagine.