blyberg.net » Thank God for the (twittering) voice of reason…

Thank God for the (twittering) voice of reason…

Finally, someone with a (thoughtful) voice of reason on Twitter. And it’s from Kathy Sierra (of Creating Passionate Users). She likens Twitter to gambling at a slot machine and notes that the rewards one gets from using Twitter are hollow and empty.

[Twitter] can trick the brain into thinking its having a meaningful social interaction, while another (ancient) part of the brain “knows” something crucial to human survival is missing.

I say Twitter is the Paris Hilton of the social web. Slutty and unfortunate. The basest manifestation of the culture and systems it represents.

I’ve received no less than 14 Twitter invitations from people whom I respect deeply and I have to wonder, why the **** are they using this? Who cares if you’re sitting in traffic, doing your homework, going to a concert, performing a bodily function, or reading a book?

I, like Kathy, am probably in the minority here, but I just hope we don’t get too distracted by this piece of candy 2.0 because, in the end, we really have better things to do. At least, I hope we do.

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I’m guessing this is both the only time in my first (or Second) life I will share tags with Paris Hilton, and I hope none of my kids are looking!

Doh! You shouldn’t be a tag here. Darn form auto-complete…

Oh well, you’re in there with Kathy Sierra too.

The one thing that intrigued me about twitter was just to have an easy way to keep track of what I’ve been working on and how long it took me to do it. I didn’t really think about the social aspects of it. Maybe I’ll twitter under an alias and not tell *anyone else* about it.

I figure IM status is just fine to let people know where I am (when I want them to know where I am).

Fair enough, but then why is it better than making a list in a text file?

[…] John Blyberg on Twitter: […]

Just the accessibility of it: I could use any web browser, or send a message from my phone.

Sure, I could write a script that does what I’m looking for, but why bother if they’re working so hard to make it easy to post from anywhere?

So, since I came to this page via Twitter, does that make me a whore - or Twitter a pimp?

Hmm. Maybe it makes you a “John” …

No, you’re a John. Wait. I just got that. Sorry for the traffic from Twitter. I could help but posting it there. I’m such a slut!

That is, “I couldn’t help”, not “could help” sorry.

FINALLY! Someone is calling a piece of 2.0 candy on the carpet for being useless & trivial, a fate that too many other pieces of candy have escaped. Twitter serves a purpose, but a clear delineation must be made between it & truly useful\productive 2.0 tools.

Oh, I forgot to mention– the “bodily function” angle is already covered by Scott Kurtz’s Poopr.

Only *slighty* less useful than twitter.

I too have seen no purpose or reason to start twittering. I was going to blog about it this weekend, but you summed up my thought perfectly so thanks for saving me some time.

There is a contest going on to see if you can call the demise date of twitter:
http://web1979.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/rip-twitter-2007-2007/

Myself, part of my job is to know about new tech. And this is fairly new, and all the cool techies are talking about it - so it’s worth it to me to check out and play with.

I agree - I don’t care if someone is sitting in traffic. But how about this guy? http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/03/twittering_your_home.html?CMP=OTC-13IV03560550&ATT=Twittering+Your+Home

That’s something useful (and something unexpected, too).

Just sayin…

John: Here’s one reason why it was better than a text file for me. I used Twitter for a ref grunt, instead of typing it into Word. I had a bit of a stumper and asked for help. Steven jumped in and had an answer for me in a few minutes. Not that I’ll be using Twitter every day, or even ever again for such a lofty task. I’m just enjoying it as a text-based gadfly and tinfoil loving raccoon (shiny shiny!).

If you’re finding ways to use twitter to enhance your productivity, that’s great. Eric and Rochelle obviously have (but I really wouldn’t expect otherwise from either of you). If you can work it into a system that you trust (in the David Allen sense), great.

But that’s not what most people are using it for. It just seems to me that there is way too much uninteresting, useless data being generated by it to ever evolve to something more than what it is–the flavor of the moment. When the hype subsides, I think the people who remain will be those who have found some practical use for it. But ultimately, even those people will move on because they’re using a system for something it wasn’t intended to support and better tools will emerge. Hopefully tools that don’t pander to the mob like Twitter does (ie, tools like LibraryThing).

P.S. Everyone invite Tim Spalding to Twitter. It’ll be awesome!

[…] of crap. I struggled to find any motivation to update mine - to twitter.” Then today I found John Blyberg’s post in which he says: “I say Twitter is the Paris Hilton of the social web. Slutty and […]

John, I am interrupting my vacation to let you know that you rock. Sometimes I look at a tool or a YouTube video that people think is the biggest new thing to hit the Web world, and I just wonder what I’m missing that I don’t “get it”. I love reading people’s blogs because I care about what my friends (and other smart people in ours and related fields) think and care about. I don’t care to know every mundane detail of their lives (heck, I don’t need to know what my husband is doing every moment). And I’ve learned not to care if I’m not in on every cool new tool, especially if I think it’s a time-waster. But if others enjoy it or find it useful, more power to ‘em. Your post had me alternately rolling on the floor and feeling grateful that I’m not the only person who doesn’t get it.

back to what’s left of my vacation.

that’s funny. your comment form parsed my end rant tag.

“if others enjoy it or find it useful, more power to ‘em”

Beautifully said Meredith. This is why I think you rock as well. Last time I checked, this was America, where people can like and do what they want (within the law, of course).

Don’t get it? Fine. Don’t use it. Thanks to John and Meredith for their honesty. Back to Twitter I go…

[…] John Blyberg recently wrote of Twitter that it is “the Paris Hilton of the social web. Slutty and unfortunate. The basest manifestation of the culture and systems it represents.” […]

Ditto on Meredith and Steven. I’m not commenting on Twitter users, just Twitter. And people who use Twitter shouldn’t feel slighted by the fact that I don’t respect the tool they use. That would be silly.

Now, back to Twitter I go…

[…] selection of Twitter Buzz. Wall Street Journal Youtube review Anti-Twitter Buzz Tags: social networking, web 2.0 March 17th 2007 Posted to News, User Generated Content & […]

You make good points about Twitter. I am still going to play with it and see if it might be useful. We all need time to play!

[…] to play around with it. However, I took note of those who were playing with - those who liked it, those who didn’t and those who found some real uses for it. I admit that I didn’t read all of the posts about […]

[…] blyberg.net/2007/03/16/thank-god-for-the-twittering-voice-of-reason Posted by ducly Filed in Uncategorized […]

[…] I am not alone. Other like-minded people (who explain Twitter much better) are: passionate and blyberg. Powered by Gregarious […]

[…] I was amused to see Blyberg pointing out Kathy Sierra’s poo-poo-ing of Twitter. Ironically, services like Twitter are […]

[…] selection of Twitter Buzz. Wall Street Journal Youtube review Anti-Twitter Buzz social networking web 2.0 Tags: social networking, web 2.0 April 16th 2007 Posted to […]

[…] more about it through the various pro and con posts doing the rounds. These include: Lifehacker, blyberg.net, David Lee King and BlogCritics. What’s my verdict? Don’t know yet, but I figure it […]

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