Comments on: Why Twitter matters

By: Kai Lo

Kai Lo — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:18:23 +0000

Pitts is dumb to assume Twitter is just a fad that will soon fade away. Twitter is growing exponentially.

By: Edwin

Edwin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:25:46 +0000

Maybe it’s that the face value doesn’t show it’s true value. The raw data value alone would make anyone geek out. You can get a real time pulse from anywhere in the world using the hashtags. I’ve seen it in action and it just blows my mind with what you gain with all this information if it is parsed, and presented correctly.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:36:45 +0000

Edwin,
Agreed. For some people (like yourself) it is worth it, obviously. I just have a really hard time seeing the value when better tools exist.

By: Edwin

Edwin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:27:50 +0000

Scott,

Just because it means nothing to you personally, doesn’t mean something isn’t worth it.

Carlos,

Agreed with FriendFeed. There are just too many web 2.0 services to stay powerful on their own. In the end Twitter will end up being nothing more than a protocol or API to power a part of FriendFeed.

If you’re using Twitter via the website you’re doing it wrong. Use twitter for what it does best, as a backbone for a more robust application with a better UI. Something like TweetGrid, TweetDeck, Digsby, Twitterfon, Tweetie, twhirl, etc.

One of the presentations at BarCamp was from the founder of the DiSo project and a board member of the OpenID people. The problem we have right now is too much fragmentation and not enough interoperability. The combination of FriendFeed and OpenID will hopefully unite all the services into one. Then with all the data easily accessible you will start seeing more applications that will help in controlling the data.

By: Carlos Miller

Carlos Miller — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:48:35 +0000

The word from the San Francisco tech community, which is where these things usually start, is that Friendfeed will eventually replace Twitter.

http://thomashawk.com/2009/02/is-twitter-afraid-of-friendfeed.html

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:45:38 +0000

Edwin,
Pounce? Jaiku? Plurk? Who? To me, those don’t even register a blip on the social networking radar. They’re simply irrelevant. In my analogy (again, a poor one because Twitter isn’t technologically superior) VHS is Facebook and/or even Myspace.

I think what’s happened with Twitter is that people began to take it seriously when it isn’t. People hopped all over it as something more than a friends/family tool. Another way to connect with the masses. On the front page of the their site, Twitter is defined as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It has since morphed into just a mess of text that is too time-consuming, too difficult to follow unless I’m on there 24/7. FB, on the other hand, I can log in and quickly see in a matter of a couple of minutes what I want and catch up quickly with individual friends or groups or threaded conversations. AND, I can follow the networks I want with people incorporating their blogs.

I simply have no interest in trying to follow any family/friends on twitter when the interface is utter crap.

Like John said, you can do the same thing on FB with more functionality to boot.

By: Edwin

Edwin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:17:05 +0000

Maybe I am being nitpicky here but even the analogy of Twitter = betamax isn’t apt because betamax lost to it’s competitor, VHS. On the other hand, almost every competitor to twitter has trouble maintaining a robust community unlike twitter.

Pounce is gone (http://pownce.com/), Jaiku is struggling (http://www.jaiku.com/), and plurk isn’t fairing any better (http://www.plurk.com/). The best competitor that Twitter has at the moment is the newly updated Facebook.

By: John

John — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:36:08 +0000

I agree with Scott. Twitter seems overhyped.

I can do the same thing Twitter does by changing my status on Facebook with more functionality to boot.

That being said, the argument “not all newpapers are technologically arrogant/outdated” is a distinction without a difference. Most all of them are. The younger employees get it and will go the route of Carlos by becoming freelancers.

As a consumer of information that suits me fine. I want the fewest filters and conflicts of interest as possible with the greatest interactivity possible. FU Herald. FU Sun Sentinel. Don’t need you anymore. Classifieds? Craigslist.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:51:10 +0000

“But even the Betamax was groundbreaking at the time.”

I use Betamax because it’s the classic example of one technology losing out to another and disappearing out of the world. But it’s a bad analogy: there isn’t anything groundbreaking about twitter at all. It’s certainly not a mind-blowing technology, and certainly not superior (we can just focus on the tool itself; no point in bringing up how often their site has technical issues) to other social networking tools.

Yes, you can read a history, and yes, you choose who you want to follow, but to me it seems a ridiculous waste of time, not simply because of the 140 character limit. In fact, that’s probably the least annoying thing about twitter.

With only having the contacts your interested in on your list of people to follow, I found sifting through histories to be painful in that you’re looking at page after page of simply text, all of it jumbled with multiple people talking independently while you’re working to piece together conversations. Extra work for the user. I mean, the basic thread concept doesn’t even exist!

There are easier, smarter, better tools, imo for social networking. And eventually, those tools will go the way of VHS, to be replaced by some greater technology. For now, those tools (like FB) provide me with more than enough social networking satisfaction.