Twitter: WTF mate?

I used twitter during my trip to GDC 2009. All my friends, family, and coworkers could track what I was doing in real time since I used a twitter app on my iphone. I was also taking pics with my iphone and uploading them to flickr.

It was really cool actually.

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So my question is, how many of you use Twitter?

I do.

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And what the heck for?

To write about what I'm doing, mostly in as regards technical issues -- but occasionally I post "off topic" stuff. By being reasonably selective with my list of people I follow, I find its a useful way to stay abreast of interesting developments.

It seems that most people are skeptical when they first hear about it -- I certainly was. Eventually I was convinced to give it a shot and after a while I started to see its appeal. It does take a little while, it's not like other services where you can evaluate them for a few days. The appeal really picks up once you have some momentum, some followers, and are following some interesting people.

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I mean, all blogs have RSS feeds too, couldn't I just link everyone to my Wordpress blog and write short stuff?

In theory, but it will lack the connectivity that is part of what makes Twitter interesting.

Certainly there is noise in the signal -- a lot of noise. Lots of people out there are not worth following. But lots of people out there have blogs that aren't worth reading either. Just like to write a good blog that attracts readers and keeps them coming back requires an investment of time and energy from you, the author, so does using Twitter effectively. If you're just going to use it to braindump every pointless thing that comes to your mind, and follow people who do the same, you won't get anything out if it.

I wrote an article for my site about the game industry's adoption of Twitter and I think that represents most of my thoughts.

It's a great medium and if you care enough about a given industry or medium to put time into finding people you find interesting and following them, then you will get a lot out of it. I absolutely love Twitter.

I like to think of it as a way to force people to listen to my brainfarts

I started using it. It's fun for when you're bored. I just post dumb stuff.

So, consider all of the conversations you have in a day. Some of them are useful. But are *all* your conversations for useful purposes? No. Sometimes you just want to shoot the sh- about inane things, like the time you mixed coke and sprite at the fast food place and it tasted really good.

That's what Twitter is (to me at least). A great big inane conversation on the internet.

This being 10th or 20th time I see twitter mentioned, I looked what it is. Looks 100% useless at first glance.

I honestly don't even know what Twitter is.

Hmm seems like its mostly useless, but I'll give it a try before I decide.

Ive been hearing about it for about a year now
as others have mentioned for the vast majority of things its crap

Though if youre unemployed or on holiday or in paid unemployment (management etc) etc then its perhaps a funish way to burn some time

Honestly, I oscillate between posting crap and crap.

I'm also kind of getting sick of how much work it is to read through all the people I've followed -- I've started using it as sort of an ad hoc RSS reader, which is obviously not what it's for. I am thinking of unfollowing news services and guys who mostly post links and just signing up to their RSS feeds instead.

Tweeting is fun, not serious. It reminds me of facebook status messages.

PS: If you twitter, I recommend Twhirl which lets you make tweets and receive tweets from your desktop. It's honestly a necessity for me: I would never use twitter if I had to open a web browser every time.

There was a lengthy, week-long discussion about the value of Twitter between the leaders of America's associations a few weeks ago. I posted the following to the listserv:

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I think the little things comprise the majority of most relationships. Those are the things that we miss. Those are the things that make us seem more real, more human. Some respondents have said that they don't tweet the little things -- I think that's a mistake. Not all information shared with others should be of practical use. People just normally can't make meaningful connections with news tickers. And the whole point of Twitter is to form those social bonds.

Tweeting is fun, but that doesn't mean your use of Twitter can't be serious. And I don't mean "serious" from a strictly marketing perspective; although, Twitter can be used that way as well.

I finally went over to see what Twitter even was. (Ironic, since i work as a web developer).

What a horrible bleepin waste of time.

I'm pretty sure it was invented for the sole purpose of stressing people out. One day there will be a syndrome named after twitter, mark my words!

seriously, I hope you guys know just how asinine "tweeting" sounds.

I'm with the people who couldn't care less about twitter. To me, it seems that the advertising campaigns pushing "twitter compatibility" with their apps and gadgets are perpetuating a sense of 'shoving the service down the throat of pop culture'. The counter-cultural side of me is resistant to being told what to like.

Pragmatically, it seems to be another source for information overload and a time sink. I can see the benefit of following the latest developments by industry workers, but I'd argue that a lot of the R&D process consists of half-thought developments. In that case, I'd rather read a polished article.

Somewhere, a lot of people are cashing in big with Twitter... Social networking => Lots of eyeballs => lots of ad exposure

The clues in the name.... twit.

Twitter is a symptom of our "need to be famous/gotta watch the celebrities" society. People actually think that what their doing is interesting/worthwhile and worth sharing with the world. Wouldn't be so bad if these boring people actually posted worthwhile stuff but its all "I'm having a burger". I don't care how funny or famous you are the boring bits of your life are just as boring as the boring bits of my life.

The only person in history who should ever have been on Twitter is Albert Einstein. At least he could say something worthwhile in 140 characters - not that he would have come up with E = mc2 if he was busy tweeting. The rest of you? Go do something creative or worthwhile.

I registered on twitter for lulz, and was delighted to discover built-in "follow 130 or so random people" functionality, as well as automated "follow you back" functionality on part of dozen or so of those random people.
It doesn't get any more stupid than that, really.

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Original post by Obscure Twitter is a symptom of our "need to be famous/gotta watch the celebrities" society. People actually think that what their doing is interesting/worthwhile and worth sharing with the world. Wouldn't be so bad if these boring people actually posted worthwhile stuff but its all "I'm having a burger". I don't care how funny or famous you are the boring bits of your life are just as boring as the boring bits of my life.

This kind of attitude seems to be incredibly pronounced amongst people who make no attempt to educate themselves on the actual benefits of Twitter as a communication platform. The amount of people I see in my Twitter feed that talk about mundane facets of their life is almost zero; if anyone actually talks about their life minutiae, then they're remove.

The way that I and a number of other people in the game industry use Twitter is a superb, low-maintenance method of networking, communication, and sharing interesting thoughts, stories, or simply entertaining links.

You can pretend to talk about the platform with some sort of strange authority as if you know what you're talking about, but to anyone that's actually put an attempt to see the benefits of Twitter and seen how simple and effective it is amongst a group of people that have communication standards it's pretty clear how ignorant people are about the service.

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Original post by Dmytry I registered on twitter for lulz, and was delighted to discover built-in "follow 130 or so random people" functionality, as well as automated "follow you back" functionality on part of dozen or so of those random people. It doesn't get any more stupid than that, really.

If you do either of those things, then you're really not going to get anything out of the service.

To anyone here looking to see some of the benefits of Twitter, sign up, and then follow your personal friends and maybe some people within the game industry. If you follow people simply to say that you tried the service and found it dumb, then you're not using it intelligently. It would be like IMing some random person from a chat room and deducing that Instant Messaging is stupid and a waste of time.