Apparently there’s this new thing called Twitter gone and showed up while I was out drifting the ocean waves.
What the heck is it?
Just WHY is it popular?
What is the point, pray?
Why do posts look so UGLY with it?
Is there any reason to use it, and how can it be used usefully?
Half the media seem obsessed with it, the other half seem scornfully scathing of it…
6 replies on “What the heck is twitter?”
It’s like… facebook status updates. And that’s all.
It’s mildly boring, but sort of interesting to see what the world is saying at any given moment.
http://current.com/items/89891774_twouble-with-twitters.htm
Unfortunately, this video sums up the majority of casual (read: obsessive) Twitter users.
I believe its original intended purpose, and the only useful purpose I’ve heard of, is as a tool for marketing/research & development, to give short updates on project progress.
One can let the entire world know what one is doing at any moment by using Twitter. Such as what one is eating for breakfast, and how one’s digestion feels afterwards, and how one is not looking forward to cleaning the loos…. thrilling stuff, what? And if you don’t have the time to sit down at your computer, why, then you can update Twitter via mobile phone.
Of course, one could already do this kind of thing using Facebook or Blogger. But then one might get distracted by, say, writing more than one sentence, or posting photos, or (in the case of Facebook) playing Scrabble or getting in touch with old friends. With Twitter, you can reveal your personal thoughts (and read those of random strangers) without any distraction…
A while ago there was a comment going the rounds in various places, saying that sooner or later Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would all combine into one huge social networking place, which of course would be known as YouTwitFace 🙂
I’d like to point out that twitter is NOT new, but rather old. Yes, indeed, in the few short eons we were all away, it came into vogue and then left it again.
And Australians don’t seem to give a crap about it. Couldn’t imagine why not… *coff*
The issue with Twitter is that its optimized for mobile communications, which other social networking sites are not. So, short is sweet with twitter.
Because of the way Twitter allows both sending and receiving ‘tweets’ on your mobile phone it facilitated some of the major breaking stories like the Iran internal conflicts and reputedly pressurized the government of Egypt in a case of Habeas corpus recently.
Sadly Twitter has also proliferated the quantity of total rubbish on the net…
I should add I believe Twitter is actually the first of what I would consider the Web 3.0 applications… by that I mean web 1.0 was primarily one directional, web 2.0 was interactive and web 3.0 will be mobile.