Hate Twitter? Know anything about it?
// July 16th, 2009
There’s still lots of people who have no idea how twitter works, and complain about it all the time. People ask me about it, so thought I’d write about it. I’ve summed it up based on some common complaints I hear from people about why they think it’s dumb:
1. “I don’t care about what So-And-So had for lunch.”
On twitter, you choose who you want to listen to (or “follow”, as twitter calls it). Therefore, if you’re listening to bunch of mundane crap like people’s lunch orders, it’s your own damn fault. You’re listening to stupid people. Blaming twitter in this way is like walking into a crowded party, paying attention to one person who talks about their lunch all night long, and then blaming the house that is hosting the party. You can’t blame a house. It’s just a house. Our hypothetical party also has EVERYONE on twitter, and if you think that there’s NOBODY on Twitter saying ANYTHING of value, you should stop reading. All these words will just confuse you.
Also, some people incorrectly assume that twitter is like instant messaging or email where incoming messages popup at any time, and are imposed directly on you. People are almost never waiting for a reply, and you don’t really need to read anything. You take in as much as you want, and therefore are in control of the value exchange. People can send you a personal message, but it’s pretty understood that timeliness isn’t necessary. Nobody cares if you don’t pay attention and miss stuff.
2. “I don’t have anything that I want to announce to people”
So don’t. You can get just as much value out of the medium if you just sit back and listen. I’d argue that your reward will be more personal and therefore more relevant to you if you contribute, but it’s not required. Also, you don’t have to talk about yourself. I follow people who have awesome links to resources I care about, like music / art / design / technology.
3. “Aren’t Facebook Status updates the same thing?”
Facebook has done a few things lately to be a little more like Twitter, but I still see them as completely different. This is entirely due to context in which I see each network. To me, my facebook contacts are people I’ve marked as “friends” because I want to be able to send them a message if I need to. I don’t really care about what 99% of them are doing from day to day, but I still want to be able to look them up if I want to, in case they might be dead.
Twitter is a very small set of people who I WANT to hear from IF I decide I want to hear anything anything at all. If I’m tired of hearing about something or someone, I stop listening for a bit. I’m not “de-friending” someone, just shifting my attention. There are zero consequences. Facebook is starting to get at this with groups, but at its foundation FB is about something different.
So there’s really no downside to twitter it in my mind. You hear about whatever you want to hear about, and it’s as easy or complicated as you want it to be. If you get plenty of new information every day, and your brain is full of new ideas all the time, you’re awesome, and don’t even need the internet, let alone twitter.
