I’ve tried Twitter. Repeatedly. And each time, I shake my head and wander away elsewhere on the internets, unable to figure out just what the appeal is behind Twitter. 140 characters? I struggle sometimes to limit my blog lengths to something people will actually read instead of just gloss over. All Twitter is to me right now is a collection of Facebook status updates without Facebook.
I’m sure I must not be getting it.
Therefore, would one of you out there mind explaining to me why it’s the bee’s knees? I’d appreciate it, because I really want to be “with it”–especially with something that’s supposedly oh so cool and techy.
Many hard-core blogers–the ones really in touch with the blogosphere and are on the cutting edge of information–find themselves wanting to post lots of links, short comments, or points toward other people’s ideas. Think Slashdot, Fark, BoingBoing, that sort of thing.
Well, with Twitter, you can keep all of those links and ‘heads ups’ going in a single stream of quick bursts. Then, you can save your actual blog posts for meaty information, like commentary or deep discussion of topics.
Think of Twitter like a ‘news ticker’ for someone like myself, allowing them to keep in touch with fans regularly between larger, more important blog posts. It’s been a wonderful tool. For someone like yourself? Not sure it’s going to be useful to post on.
However, it’s a very interesting way to track news and how information is spreading. Set up a Twitter feed on your desktop with a few important news sites and some interesting sf/f people on it, and you’ll see what the point is. It’s like your own extremely-customizable newsfeed.
Interesting. It was sort of neat to see Twitter explode when MJ died–and how fast the news spread because of it. And yeah–if I have some link I want to share, I guess I’ll try going the tweet route for a while. We’ll see. Thanks for the response.
I don’t get it either, I had resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably too old, I don’t quite hit that constant need for stimulus that those just 5 to 10 years younger have. Maybe I just don’t have cool enough peeps?
Anyway, I don’t have enough time to blog, nevermind keep up with fleeting thoughts of others.
Maybe we’ll understand . . . one day . . .