Twitterholic...? I think not

I’m still grappling with trying to understand the popularity of Twitter. I heard about this “great new thing” about 18 months ago so, I of course being the curious geek that I am rushed to the site to create my account. I do look at it once and while and have attempted to maintain an interesting list of folks that I’m following but I still haven’t groked what all the fuss is about.

Great quote on the topic from Chris Moore, “TheAuthorGuy”: “Remember the days when the random thoughts that came into your head only annoyed you? Good times.” It seems like so much noise. I’m amazed at the assumption by so many users that what they are having for breakfast or the movie that they are standing in line to see would find meaning in other’s lives. It seems slightly pretentious in the best of cases and just plain annoying in the rest.

That’s not to say that I haven’t found amusing and sometimes (although all to rarely) useful bits of info on the service. I think there are probably a handful of folks that have actually mined the service for good cause.

One such case is our current President. During his campaign, Obama recognized that there was power in garnering a large following on this service, particularly when you are attempting to gather a political force within the general populace. He could disseminate information easily to tens of thousands of people (as long as it was 140 characters or less). He even “announced” his pick of a running mate and some other important decisions in his campaign in this venue. Perhaps this is the lesson that the Twitter folks are focused on.

Other uses that have evolved from Twitter include customer service. Some corporations have found that if they put up an account and gather followers they can monitor commentary from the Twitter users on their products or services. Comcast, the large Internet service provider organization has made this is an extension of their user support. I can only imagine that there aren’t nearly as many customers that are religiously using this service in this manner (as opposed to the traditional customer service interfaces) to warrant monitoring Twitter feeds with a large number of full time employees but the few incidents that have been made public have played well in technical forums.

Twitter has earned the ultimate compliment in that the service is garnering some copycats. Most notable of these is the friend service, Facebook.

Facebook has been embroiled in some controversy over the recent changes that were put in place of the user interface within their popular application service. What they installed, essentially, is a Twitter knock-off. It’s the capability to post inane little comments on what is transpiring in their lives in a seemingly free form fashion. The difference (I guess) is that in the case of Facebook, the audience is folk you actually have a relationship with as opposed to the more anonymous Twitter service.

Unfortunately, I’m still of the opinion that the “juice isn’t worth the squeeze”. I read that surveys have found the vast majority of folks that have signed up for the Twitter service eventually “quit” letting their accounts expire from inactivity. The remaining “hangers on” are usually tech folks (geeks) that are still curious as to what form or fashion this fad will morph into.

---Jim