Twitter: I still don’t get it
I’m certainly not the first person to ask this question, but what exactly is the point of Twitter (I mean aside from being the poster child for scalability problems)?
Most Twitter feeds consist of messages like “Cheese sandwich for lunch”, “Just watched the latest episode of [some TV show]” and “Put more RAM in my PC, much faster now”. Who on earth wants to read this stuff? Yet people on Twitter are each following hundreds of other people, getting bite-sized updates about the most mundane details of the lives of huge numbers of strangers.
Perhaps, like reading blogs, the secret is to filter out the rubbish? There are an awful lot of blogs and, it has to be said, a lot of awful blogs, but eventually you find the ones you like. Maybe I just need to find the right people to follow on Twitter? Fortunately, Jurgen Appelo has produced another one of his lists. This time it’s the Top 50 Twitterers to Follow for Developers. There are several instantly recognisable names on the list; many people whose blogs I read. So I took a look at most of their Twitter feeds and no, these people can’t make it interesting either. There are confusing fragments of conversations with other people that you don’t know, half-formed thoughts, obfuscated hyperlinks and yet more mundane life details that nobody needs to know.
Can it really be that the emperor is naked? Has the medium become more important than the message? I’d really like to know what the appeal of it is. Is it the constant reassurance that there are hundreds of people out there who have lives as equally dull as your own?
Online it’s everywhere. Even the BBC has started using it. BBC News’ coverage of the recent events in Mumbai included contributions sourced from Twitter (with no indication of the validity of these contributors or guarantees as to the veracity of their information).
Then again, is Twitter really that popular? Nobody that I know in the real world uses Twitter. They all use Facebook, some have blogs but not one person uses Twitter, not even the software developers. Where does the buzz come from? Why are there dozens of imitations trying to repeat Twitter’s “success”?
So this is an invitation. Please tell me (in the comments below) why I should care about Twitter. What am I missing? I’m even prepared to give it a trial, if somebody can convince me that it is worthwhile. I’ve no problems sharing the trivial events of my daily existence (I’m thinking of maybe having soup for lunch today). It’s the other bit that confuses me. How can I extract value from other people’s Twittering?
on December 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Thank you for saying that!
on December 5th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I blame the bay area Boredarati
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I had the exact same problem with Twitter. However I have now started to follow Twitter using TweetLater.com (not associates in any way).
You basically receive Tweets hourly by email (like Google Alerts).
In this way you follow what is happening in your topic of interest without any loss in productivity.
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I only follow about two dozen people. Some of the updates are mundane, the rest are pretty insightful comments/links on language design and software engineering.
We also use it (somewhat informally) for tracking work progress, although we’re switching to Yammer for that because of the additional functionality it offers.
Just because it *allows* mundane tweets doesn’t mean (a) YOU have to make them, and (b) you have to follow people that only say mundane things. Same reason I don’t watch Jerry Springer: TV *allows* useless crap, but it also allows for the sublime.
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I don’t get it either (but haven’t signed up yet)
You’re not alone.
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yeah, the emperor is naked! Now kill the messenger !
… or, wait, I am confusing 2 stories
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for this post! It’s exactly what I’ve experienced, too!
I tried to follow some people whose (very good) blogs I read – and I also found their tweets to be totally useless.
When I ask somebody what’s so good about Twitter, they usually say something about lifestreaming, yaddahyaddah.
Well.
The best one guy could come up with was that they used Twitter as a SMS notification service when a new ticket to their bug tracker had been submitted. But they only did that when SMS was still free on Twitter.
Anyway, I’d also really like to know who is worth following.
So far I haven’t succeeded in finding somebody.
on December 5th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I got sucked into twitter recently by a coworker. It turns out that it’s a great way to share bits of information when you are at a conference or working on a project.
Sometimes if you twitter that you are having a problem with some technology one of your twitter buddies will come back with some helpful information. That’s that kind of community twitter fosters, it’s much different than the facebook “gotta catch em all” friend collector mindset.
on December 5th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Like “Caligula”, we’re using micro-blogging (identi.ca, not Twitter… Open Source rules!) at work. Instead of having daily stand-ups, we’re using identi.ca to keep each other informally informed about what we’re doing. When need be, we’ll quickly meet to hash out stuff face to face.
on December 5th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Thanks for the responses so far.
I’ve also found these two recent related articles:
What is Twitter Good For in the Enterprise? 3 Key Use Cases
Those who can’t, tweet
I can kind of see that within a software development team, something Twitter-like for internal status updates (of the what-have-I-done kind rather than the what-have-I-eaten kind) might be useful. I’m still struggling to see the value in the more typical public-facing Twitter usage.
on December 5th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’ve often asked myself this same question, and the only answer I can provide is that one of my friends was detained at the Prop 8 rally, and the only way he could send out a quick message for help was to Tweet it through his phone, which got his friends to bail him out of jail.
I think if Facebook had SMS integration for their wall/status, then Twitter would totally be obsolete, I mean they already integrate themselves into Facebook status.
It really is just facebook status/wall for geeks…I simply jumped on board because I’m afraid if I don’t it’s going to be another “next big thing” I’ll have missed — I just don’t know when that time will come :-\
on December 5th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
welll…….I would say……..follow the useful peoples and ignore those kinda message…….I got a many solutions from twitter friends in some problems……so I would say twitter rocks…BTW I’m using twitterfox for tweeting and it is great tool……
on December 6th, 2008 at 3:40 am
You just have to follow the right people, some people have some horrible posts. I don’t follow anyone that bitches or talks about random things in their day.
on December 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I recently signed up to Twitter as a kind of “give it a whirl” experiment. While I agree that 90% of tweets are mundane crap, I’ve also had people tweet interesting links they find which have ended up bookmarked and I’ve given programming to someone who tweeted a problem. I assume if I ever tweeted a problem one of my followers would help me out as well.
Many people also use Twitter as a form of marketing, and driving traffic to their blogs from people seeing back-and-forth tweets and wondering who the person one of their followers is talking to. I know I’ve gotten several new followers after helping someone out.
I think the key to getting a lot of value out of Twitter is to recognise the chatter and personal crap for what it is and ignore it, and concentrate only on the few tweets with good information. Sure the signal to noise ratio is pretty awful, but sometimes it’s worth it nonetheless.
on December 8th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“I just got on a bus”
)
Twitter seems like blogging for the ADHD generation (which, when I think about it, are the same generation that are actually blogging!).
Facebook status message are fairly volatile, seems like people enjoy playing with them. I even went through a phase of writing all of my facebook status updates in haiku form in order to demonstrate my obvious intellectual superiority to all my friends ;o),
Twitter is yet another demonstration on how the masses quite enjoy playing around with, effectively pointless stuff. Give them a platform that connects them to all their friends, and literally masses of people with whom to collaborate, learn with and share ideas and what will they do…. implement applications that let you pretend to be a werewolf!
The huge user base of these sites, coupled with the 99.9% rubbish output is just testament to the fact that human intellect cannot be scaled using a horizontal model ;o)
on December 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
@Wez, bus? I thought you rode elephants these days? I’m honoured that you found a way to post here even though you don’t have Internet access. As you know, I don’t use FaceBook, but I do at least understand its appeal.
Another thing about Twitter is that it doesn’t even seem to be the best at what it does. For example, Pownce appears to be slicker, but that’s closing down. I guess Twitter benefitted from being first.
@Tim, “the signal to noise ratio is pretty awful” – that’s really my complaint, it would be nice to be able to filter it. BTW, I like the phrase “one of my followers”, it sounds like you’ve got your own religion going there
on December 8th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“I’m honoured that you found a way to post here even though you don’t have Internet access.”
Thank heavens for small mercies and mobile broadband USB data cards! ;o)
on December 20th, 2008 at 3:09 am
The problem is that you follow the wrong people!
http://www.twitter.com/fnascimento
Wohh
on December 20th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Fabio, I took a look at your Twitter feed. I’m sure it’s great but unfortunately I don’t speak Portuguese
on January 6th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I agree, and I’ve written about it myself. I have a twitter account, but have never posted anything. I read it every couple of weeks, but I just can’t get that excited about it.
on February 11th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
[...] said it before, I don’t get Twitter. For me, the hysteria generated by the flat-lined signal-to-noise [...]