Rant: Twitter

Caged

Caged

Caged

Man of Honour
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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I aplogise if I'm beating a dead horse into the ground by going over this, but I can't be the only one who can't see a single example of where using Twitter is more advantageous than any other more established and proven technology?

This rant is partly spurred on by this BBC news article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8204842.stm

That story links to this one, where a Twitter feed is used to update people on roadworks on the M8: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8201326.stm

Now call me stupid but for the sole purpose of providing short status updates on roadworks, wouldn't an RSS feed on the website of the Scottish government department responsible for the road be more appropriate and professional? It seems that RSS was almost built for this, yet for some reason putting it on a 3rd-party website which limits the length of updates to 140 characters was deemed more useful.

Where it's necessary to allow people to respond to updates then surely a blog format with threaded comments achieves this better than the Twitter method of just throwing replies in chronological order. Not to mention the ability to write a longer article.

Has anyone here done any work promoting with Twitter and is in a position to explain why it's better, or is what we're seeing now just a lot of people who know just enough about computers to be dangerous jumping on the bandwagon - "i want this on that twitter thing" and either not knowing about any more suitable alternatives or simply ignoring them?
 
I guess twitter is now the latest fad, a bit like the way facebook was last year...

40% babble seems a little lower than expected, I'm surprised it wasn't 100%! ;)
 
Yes Twitter is gash.

It boggles how something which is effectively the same as the status field on Facebook, or even MSN Messenger/Windows Live has got this far.
 
Spunkey said:
It boggles how something which is effectively the same as the status field on Facebook, or even MSN Messenger/Windows Live has got this far.
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I never thought of it like that. It is actually quite amazing how popular it has become when it is essentially what you just described.
 
I find it funny how most media really plug it to hell...

Especially bbc...

I'm on it myself, I haven't found it of any use yet, I put on what I have been doing a few times... But it gets boring after logging in
 
Well, the marketing press is all abuzz about Twitter, so don't worry, those lovely marketing b'ends will kill it soon enough...
 
I use it mainly for a source of information, not for keeping track of people.

ie: lots of fellow designers and developers who twitter about 'must read' articles and whatnot. It saves me the hassle of having to go through all of the RSS feeds I have to find the good stuff.

I mean, I still go through my RSS feeds when I have a chance but I'm just too busy to do it anything close to daily.

When used as a source of information or a marketing tool, twitter is great. However, for keeping track of your friends/family, I think it's pointless as everyone uses facebook anyway.
 
I dislike it too, and the way the media is fawning over it is pretty sickening. At one point the trending topics were quite interesting, but now they're always being spammed by viagra salesmen.
 
Just seems to be a means for companies/celebrities to push info at you. For the man on the street it's a waste of time. Best stat I've heard about it is that the average numbers of tweets that a user makes is 1, says a lot about it.
 
I have a work account, can be useful when thinking of ideas for school projects etc. Have a number of teachers, pupils, adobe partners and other creative people who can help with ideas for lessons and projects.

I think I'd survive without it, check it now and again, thats about it.
 
It's a quick and easy way for individuals to communicate things publicly.

Companies or organisations misusing it does reek of bandwagon-jumping.

IMO it's one of those things where a lot of opinionated people start trashing the entire service, just because they don't like the way it's being marketed. It's pretty tiresome to see people doing this all the time.
 
monkeysmith said:
I have a work account, can be useful when thinking of ideas for school projects etc. Have a number of teachers, pupils, adobe partners and other creative people who can help with ideas for lessons and projects.

I think I'd survive without it, check it now and again, thats about it.
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So you're using it like an online brainstorm? I can see where this would be quite handy actually.
 
Why do the people who don't like Twitter want it to die? If you don't find it useful, don't use it. It's as simple as that. I don't find lots of websites useful that others will use on a daily basis. Doesn't mean I want it to die.
 
mr.sly said:
Why do the people who don't like Twitter want it to die? If you don't find it useful, don't use it. It's as simple as that. I don't find lots of websites useful that others will use on a daily basis. Doesn't mean I want it to die.
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I think it's more the fact that it is always being rammed down our throats (people who don't want it) that annoys us more. I'm a hater I have to say, but it wasn't intended as a business tool to begin with, businesses have just adapted it to suit their needs. Company I work for uses it and it's a nightmare trying to 'teach' it to the users who expect it to be integrated into the business IT. </rant>
 
It's a fad. Someone saw facebook, deduced that the most popular function on there is the status updates, and made a site for it.
 
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mr.sly said:
Why do the people who don't like Twitter want it to die? If you don't find it useful, don't use it. It's as simple as that. I don't find lots of websites useful that others will use on a daily basis. Doesn't mean I want it to die.
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I'm fairly sure that wasn't the point anyone was trying to make. Good job at overreacting though.
 
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