Trying to understand twitter
I’ve been slow to adopt some of the things I see very useful today, but twitter is not in my adoption list. I just don’t get it. I gave it time, holding back my opinion just in case one day I would see the light, but I still don’t. It’s kind of cool when I think about the technology, but even that doesn’t make me want to ever use it. I keep reading about how it’s growing and growing—how come I don’t understand why it’s so popular? I just saw this on the main page: “eyelids drooping… 5pm… what the heck?” Hmmm… ok, whatever.
Chris Wednesday, 25 Apr, 2007 Posted at 04:11AM
Twitter is yet another useless web 2.0 social app. I too fail to understand why it’s so popular.
Lee Wednesday, 25 Apr, 2007 Posted at 06:52PM
Ryan, I think what a lot of people see in twitter is really it’s potential or even what it represents and not it’s current state of functionality. It is really a lot like skype when it was first released in 98 or 99… I signed up the first week or month of public release and it didn’t really work well and there wasn’t really anyone I knew to call or link up with. I had a couple of poor quality conversations with people in Montana and Australia? I think… And I thought well, that’s kind of cool, but so what?
Twitter, in my opinion represents the future of the web in a way that shows how we will be able to communicate and interact with people we know or at least those we trust. The web
will soon beis pervasive and if we can provide our profile or virtual presence with the appropriate metadata, that enables realtime, dynamic interactivity within a group without picking up the phone to call or sending an email. I’ll just check your status or your last entry and I will make a judgement on how to best interact with you. It will save both you and me time. I will also get your insights and emotions on issues and happenings in realtime. Think about knowing that your wife dropped the kids off at school safely or think of a twitter, flickr, and news mashup that you can go back and look at what you were doing or thinking during a certain time in history.There are several things that I would do to improve twitter and they need better tools to provide the ability to deal with monitoring anyone outside of my small circle of trust, but its a start.
Twitter is cool and will get purchased by one of the big players for millions. I wish I would have thought of it.
Ryan Wednesday, 25 Apr, 2007 Posted at 07:09PM
Yeah, I guess in that regard, it does seem to fit. Communication is a huge part of what causes things to fail. I still think it will take the next step for me to truly understand the benefits. But thinking past the fact of “it’s a service that let’s me tell my friend I’m eating lunch” definitely is a start. I’ll try and follow the concepts behind it, rather than the application itself. Even you would have to agree, there’s honestly no point for twitter “the application” to exist—right? As you said, maybe it’s a start toward a greater goal, so I’ll try and think of it that way.
Lee Thursday, 26 Apr, 2007 Posted at 03:49AM
I don’t know about “there’s honestly no point for twitter “the application†to exist—right?”, because for people like me, I have to see something like this before I can think about how it can be useful. It seems to serve a purpose and I really don’t feel that way about hardly anything. But I am not trying to persuade you to use it, like I think you should use Flock. ;) I just wanted to share my views.
Ryan Thursday, 26 Apr, 2007 Posted at 06:14AM
Lee—completely understandable. I guess I don’t see the benefit in using it in its current form. I do, however, realize the benefit of being able to deliver real-time communication from multiple devices/locations, but in the context of “what I’m doing right now,” it seems pointless to me. I can see, from your perspective, why you would think it’s cool, though. While you may or may not enjoy posting what you’re doing right now, you’re able to look beyond what it is and the options it presents. What I don’t get is, the person who has no clue about the future of twitter and could care less about how to use this type of communication in something else (which I believe is the majority of the users); why do they deem it so cool? I know there is a pool of users for nearly every application, but twitter’s audience is much more than a pool. It’s like the Atlantic Ocean. I think there is major benefits in collaboration and
somesocial software, but at the same time, some social applications serve no purpose other than to “be social”. And that usually doesn’t cut it for me.Having said that, there are a ton of things I think are pointless and don’t “get” on the web. That doesn’t mean they won’t end up selling for lots of money. It just means I’m not one of the 450 trillion people “twittering”.
Luke Friday, 27 Apr, 2007 Posted at 06:14AM
I think the purpose of twitter is somewhat like a blog, but essentially stripped down to the bare minimum of what something is feeling/thinking. Again, I don’t get it personally, it’s just another aspect of social communcation to exploit.