In a post from some time back (July 31, 2000, in fact) I said that I don't use (or much appreciate) Twitter. I got quite a few comments at the time, and a long response from Paul some time later.
Paul's points are well taken - you can read them here yourself - but I continue to be frustrated by both Facebook and Twitter. Of course discussing that frustration in a blog post probably isn't all that original. Or intelligent.
I'm still considering shutting down my Facebook account. The only reason I don't is that it does - as Paul suggests - keep me somewhat up to date on the lives of friends that I otherwise would lose touch with completely. That may be more important For Paul than me, being as he's separated from so many by an ocean. To me it's only something nice to have, not something critical to my life.
Some time back - after the July post that started this - I began using FB's new "lite" user interface: lite.facebook.com. It's not perfect but it has greatly reduced the distractions that come with the standard FB site. That's helped somewhat, and is probably the reason I haven't left Facebook for good. Time will tell if it's enough, or if they change it to enable the silly applications and things that only annoyed me. My take on FB is still evolving.
Twitter, however, has proven less useful to me every time I am exposed to it. Paul's comments on it are quite good, but let me give you a counter example. Today's Loma Fire near my home lead to some digging on the web for information. Some places had links to Twitter, and eventually I chased them, mostly to see if there was anything useful out there. Eventually I found the keyword #loma that seems to be related to tweets about the fire.
And what do you suppose I found there? Not much, actually. Chase the link to see it yourself, assuming it's still valid. It was mostly (lots of) repeats of information it was simpler to find in other places, like the official CalFire site and local news organizations. There were a few comments and a couple links to pictures too, but nothing all that useful or interesting. That said, about the sixth time I read "Problem: water and lunches are 3 hours late" though, I was starting to wonder.
In any case it turned out to be essentially useless, and this was a real time case where Twitter is supposed to stand out. It didn't.
Going back to my premise, if someone wants to pontificate about what they are eating or where they are traveling, etc. in a medium like Twitter or FB, I'm pretty sure I'd rather not know. If that same someone wants to make a cohesive narrative out of that part of their life, that's great. Such things are called many things: articles, blog posts, short stories, even books. A series of tweets, however, is not remotely cohesive, at least not to me, and without the context from one to another I feel as if I am watching a feature length film by viewing only every 10,000th frame.
So, for now, my opinion on Twitter stands: I don't get it, and I don't find it useful - or interesting - when I am exposed to it. Facebook may get a pass, or not. I reserve judgement for now, but only thanks to the new lite UI.
May your experiences be better.
