Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Ramble: And I still don't get Twitter


I noticed today that I've produced five hundred tweets. Five hundred and three, to be exact. And I still don't get Twitter. Much.

I get bits of it. I've participated in a few interesting TweetChats, though there seems to be a critical mass factor - too few people and the chat is dull, too many and you can't possibly keep up. And I enjoy the remarks from people that I know. (But I read those people's blogs, and a blog seems like a much more reliable way to catch what they had to say.) And sometimes the conversation going on while lots of people are reacting to a television show or news event can be entertaining.

But when I consider it as a daily tool, or entertainment, or whatever it is, I remain puzzled. It feels mostly like eavesdropping on a mass scale. It doesn't have the ethical issues of eavesdropping, of course - everybody knows that their every word is available to everyone. But all the same, I suppose that I consider partial privacy and a limited audience to be an essential element of any conversation.

5 comments:

  1. Don't get twitter. Never even used it. I had a look once, shrugged and moved on. For me, it's a bit like shouting something random at a crowd of people while you speed past them in a very fast car.

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  2. I keep thinking that I should go back and try Twitter again - but it just gave me the feeling that global warming wasn't such a bad thing last time I tried it :-(

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  3. I really love the internet. Love Facebook especially. Love blogging.

    But Twitter? Bah. Eff that crap.

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  4. And I so love twitter! It does seem to be that you do need a certain number of real, engaged, followers/ following before it becomes a lot of fun. There are people with large numbers of followers, but it doesn't mean they have an engaged audience. And as you've seen, it's a great place to spread the word about blog updates. I look for news about your blog being updates too!

    Well even if you don't tweet, I will see you here, and at Bloggeries forum, and hopefully at my blog now and then too.

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  5. Yo, TIG! I like that metaphor a lot. :)

    Howdy, Glen! I want to like it. I really do. But aside from the occasional good TweetChat, I just experience puzzlement.

    Greetings, Kyna! Hee. I don't get into Facebook either, but I understand how Facebook fails to mesh with my personality - it's not the big puzzle that my Twitter-not-liking is.

    Heya, Melody! Yep, the engaged followers is probably a big part of it. I was announcing my posts for a while, but it seemed vaguely wrong to be _mostly_ announcing blog updates rather than participating, so I stopped when I slacked off on participating.

    And, yep, I'll be at all three of those places. :)

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