Thing 19

I’ve been curious about Twitter for a while, so when I saw it on the Web 2.0 Awards list, I thought I’d take this opportunity to check it out further.  It seems like more and more people I know are using Twitter, but I’ve never understood the appeal.  We already have cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, Facebook status updates . . . how connected do we really need to be with our friends, family, and colleagues?

After browsing through the Twitter homepage, I can’t say my opinion has changed at all.  I’m a fairly techno-savvy person, admittedly addicted to Facebook and Gmail and text messaging, but I do have limits and I think Twitter might be one of them.  I don’t want to know what other people are doing every minute of every day – you could waste so much time each day just reading Twitter updates that you wouldn’t accomplish anything yourself!  I even think Facebook status updates more than once or twice daily are excessive (though I’m sure I’ve been guilty of sometimes changing my status more frequently than that), so Twitter just seems like extreme overkill.  And possibly kind of creepy – I know you have control over who receives your updates, but think of the stalking possibilities!

I can see that Twitter might have some interesting uses, though, professionally and otherwise.  It would be a very good way to distribute a last-minute message about a changed meeting time or something of that nature to colleagues (though that would, of course, require everyone in your office to be on Twitter themselves and signed up for your updates).  Another great application I can think of for Twitter is live-blogging events.  I read some Twitter-based live blogs during Fashion Week this year, and it was much more engaging than an after-the-fact post.  The off-the-cuff style made it seem like the next best thing to really being there, and I think readers got more unfiltered reactions.

So, in general, I think Twitter is great for providing up-to-the-minute coverage of events or quickly distributing small bits of important information, but I can’t see incorporating it into my daily life.  My own life is boring enough; I don’t need to read about every minute of my friends’ boring days, too!