What’s With the Twitter Craze?
“Heading home for the weekend!!!”
“C1 Build Failed.”
“Is this thing on? Blustery day in Albuquerque. Making some progress on a few loose ends at work.”
“Why oh why do I keep watching Smallville?”
“I wonder if anybody interesting was born”
The above quotes are from Twitter, a site where people write whatever pops into their head.
Several blogs have raved about twitter and I wondered what I was missing out on.
“Yep, I finally ‘get’ Twitter, and unfortunately, it’s highly addictive.” (Brian Clark after posting I’m still trying to figure out if I want to use Twitter a few weeks before)
“He also convinced me to start using Twitter . . . Twitter is fantastic” (Rich Schefren)
“you can keep in touch no matter where you are” (Caroline Middlebrook)
I have yet to figure out what there is to “get” with twitter. A question on AskMetafilter had responses matching my own feelings, but that doesn’t help to understand why people love Twitter so much. Maybe people are just wired differently. Some have Twitter-friendly wiring while others don’t see the use.
There are plenty of people who are wired for Twitter. It’s popularity is growing fast, and it’s success has sparked a new generation of web sites like FoodFeed where people post what they ate and TwittEarth where you can watch the Earth twitter away in graphical splendor.
As someone who is ‘in to the twitter craze’, I find it hard to explain why it’s useful, but it is(to me). I think it takes time to figure out how it might be useful to yourself. There is a lot of noise on it, but if the right people follow you, it can be a powerful tool and resource. I use to bounce problems and questions off of a lot and I learn about news and technology faster than any other source.
To get it, you have to use it.
Chad: I can see the benefit of being able to bounce questions off people and getting a quick response. I created an account and posted a few times but it seemed like talking to a wall. I’m sure interaction would make it more interesting.
However, this blog describes twitter as, “an infinite number of conversations going on that you can participate in.”
Talk about information overload! Research continues to show that we’re not good at multitasking. Having an instant message window open to the world isn’t going to help productivity.
By the way, you have a new follower :)
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