Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Twits

Today Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) wrote the following, with which I heartily agree:
Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/14.html


I just can't get myself the least bit interested in Twitter, but I can't help being interested in why other people are interested and I'm not.

Maybe the thing I don't like about Twitter is how empty it feels to me to "shout [sound bytes] into the abyss", as Joel puts it. I related this to a friend (in IRC, which is arguably not that far away from Twitter on a certain continuum) and he replied that "it's not the abyss. It's your follower's inboxes." Fair enough. But what percentage of Twits have followers, and why would I ever want to follow a Twit?

There's a certain type of fascination many people seem to have with being broadly up-to-date on lots of topics. Many of these people probably use readers (such as Google Reader) to keep up with the RSS feeds they've subscribed to and filtered. I tried using Google Reader briefly, until I realized rather quickly that I just don't care about using the Internet that way.

I also have trouble caring about the "status" of the hundreds of people I know (sorry, Facebook). I like reading longer, more thoughtful updates on people's lives, but I don't care what you had for breakfast today (sorry, Sarah). I log into Facebook every once in a while just because there are occasionally new connections made with old friends, and it's as good a way as any to keep some sort of link so we can contact each other if we want to. Once I'm in there, I often end up reading just a bit on somebody's wall, or looking at somebody's photos, or something. But "keeping up" is just not something I worry about at all, and my Facebook apathy seems to well up from the same spring as my Twitter apathy.

Maybe, someday, I'll catch the wave and become a Twit myself. But in the meantime, I plan to keep puzzling out why the Twits care so much while I don't give a hoot.

Edit: On an ironically related note, see http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2010/03/14/.