Ever tweet? Still do or not?
Never tweeted, never had in interest in tweeting or following someone else’s tweets, don’t know anyone who tweets (that I know of), and don’t think my phone is tweet-capable. I’m sort of waiting for the whole thing to die off, but that might make me sound like a fuddy duddy.
I get a lot of pretty specific news and information from Twitter that would near-impossible to gather any other way. Since you neither tweet or follow anyone who does, can I ask in what way you think that Twitter disrupts your life in even the most insubstantial way? (Other than seeing and responding to message board posts about it.)
I don’t know how, or even if my victrola can do that.
I was looking for “haven’t tweeted yet” but couldn’t find it.
Am I too late? Did I miss the tweeting?
It doesn’t disrupt my life at all. I just don’t want it to.
I’m not totally against it, and I’m sure there are good things about it; I’m not interested in being that connected. If it somehow grew to become something that I had to adopt just to maintain the same level of connected-ness I have now, I’d be unhappy about it. I’m sure I’d get over it, though.
Tweeting doesn’t disrupt my life in any way either, (except for my friends trying to get my to tweet) but I am also hoping for it to die off.
I am falling behind the times. I see absolutely no reason to post one-sentence comments about my life, and am honestly not even sure how to access other people’s tweets. And not remotely interested, so please don’t tell me.
I hardly ever texted either, beyond “is now a good time to call?”
I update my facebook status when I have something interesting to say, but I’m not so self-absorbed as to think that anyone would actually care enough about what I’m doing in my day to day life to go to a website solely devoted to THAT. I don’t even like READING twitter pages…they just stink of “EVERYBODY LOVE ME!!!”
Oh, let me answer that one. It’s like Paris Hilton. Yes, you can ignore her, except that you can’t. Waiting for her 15 minutes to expire as well.
I am not corkboard but I can speak for myself when I say that some people’s brains and lifestyles aren’t compatible with Twitter. I am only 36 years old and my profession is designing and building large information systems but there is a strange generational gap going on out there (not to say some older people don’t use Twitter). I have a cell phone but I don’t accept incoming calls and only use it for emergencies. I don’t do texting at all. If someone wants to reach me, they can find my home phone number or e-mail me. I obviously do message boards as well. I joined Facebook a few months ago and that has been useful for finding people but I don’t play their stupid games or make pointless comments about what ever I ate for lunch or whatever pops into my head. When someone wants to contact me, I always direct them to phone or e-mail conversations.
There was a fad back in the dark ages of the web (mid to late 1990’s) that embraced the concept of “push” content versus “pull” content. Push content is like TV or radio where someone else just sends you what they want. Pull content is where the user controls what they want to see such as just surfing the web or selecting threads to read on the Dope. Neither of these definitions fit current internet and web content completely but some people like are much more strongly biased to the “pull” side. I don’t want to see random crap coming through all day long. The fact that it even exists takes up some degree of mental energy and a small amount of time. It is basically Spam generated by people you know and I personally don’t like that.
You just described Twitter.
You just described Facebook.
I log onto Twitter every morning. I’ve never seen a Paris Hilton post in my life. Or from Oprah. I see exactly what I want to see - no more or less.
This is the perfect illustration of people who don’t know what Twitter is actually for (your friends, not you). Sharing one line updates on what I had for lunch is NOT the ideal use of the medium. Used correctly, it provides you with important updates on important topics that are important to you.
I have friends on Twitter, but I don’t follow them - they have nothing to say that isn’t being simulposted on Facebook. However, I CNN, a handful of fantasy baseball experts, a few baseball writers and the Amazon Gold Box all require several more clicks to get to, and a bit more effort to discern if the news is…new. Twitter does that for me automatically.
I follow a lot of British comedians that I like. Many of them are as funny on Twitter as they are in their “official” products. So it’s like free extra bonus funny. And then they point me to others I can try out. Fetaltwitterer is one of my current favorites - tweeting from within the womb.
Same here…I used to have a handful of my IRL friends’ Twitter feeds going to my phone, but I got tired of getting their tweets and seeing them again on FB. Plus, one of my friends posts mostly links and my phone is link-incapable so I stopped that.
I used to follow Stephen Fry’s tweets on my phone and he got way too into it and I got sick of getting messages from him all the time.
Now I just get Stephen Colbert and David Mitchell, and they are great for tweeting weird, random thoughts (well, Colbert mostly). That’s just enough for me.
I’m sure it’s a wonderful thing, but I’m just not interested. Who knows? I resisted the pull of LJ for years and now I update almost daily. I resisted FB; I am on it, though I only post occasionally - mostly I respond to other people’s posts.
I am not and never will be on myspace.
So maybe one day I will be on Twitter. Most likely not. I don’t need important updates on topics important to me. I never answer my cellphone unless I know the phone number, which leaves me with maybe 5 people I answer from. I go on the web for my news, when I want.
I appreciate the education, though. I’m not being sarcastic - it’s nice to know it has other uses than inane ones.
No problem - people are usually actually surprised when I describe to them the actual useful uses I get out of Twitter. “But what about your friends?” Don’t know, don’t care - unless I’m IRL friends with Peter Gammons, I’m not following them.
Quite possible. And while it does allow you to really narrow down the info you get, if you start following “Grand Master Crochet Artist Susie” because she posts wonderful things on tying a piece of yarn together, nothing is stopping her from also describing the mundane and trivial aspects of her life as well.
To continue the (pretty bad) metaphor, let’s say you do really want to start getting updates on crocheting. It is a pretty popular hobby, so there’s likely quite a few sources out there. Also, it’s likely that instead of tweets, people are writing blog articles elsewhere on the internets. SOMEONE out there has designated themselves the clearinghouse of crochet articles, and when something interesting pops up, that person sends out a tweet with a link. You follow that person (and only that person), and get the same info instead of following 25 people who end up telling you the name of their new kittens.
Twitter has had a weird sort of intro - it divided people into two camps immediately. People who jumped all over it and people who scorn it. I admit to having some scorn for it, but that’s not twitter-related - I tend to be a little slow on most new networking things and pretty much scorn them all except the ones I’m on. 
Human nature, ya know.
But because of this dichotomy it has been somewhat difficult to find out what twitter actually does! So it’s nice to know. However, how do we know the self-designated crochet person actually knows what she’s talking about?
I love Twitter. Every single day, actors and comedians I genuinely enjoy (Michael Nelson, Bill Corbett, Weird Al, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Edgar Wright, William Shatner, Rayne Wilson, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Doug Benson to name a few) send out humorous and interesting messages that crack my shit up. And I don’t even have to pay for it! Sometimes they even acknowledge me! That’s not to mention the people I follow in my specific industry, the people I follow b/c they’re my friends and I’m interested in their lives, my family, and the regulars news/updates. I follow about 125 twitter accounts and have a little over 100 following me. I enjoy it. Oh, and when somebody starts to annoy me, I simply unfollow the account. I don’t see anything that I don’t want to see. And people who only post updates on their minute to minute activities (“Just made tea.” & “Head hurts”) aren’t that interesting or popular.
FWIW, a lot of people have a bizarre image of Twitter and I’m not sure why. If it resembled what’s been described in this thread, I wouldn’t be interested in it, either.
I guess I see it as a solution in search of a problem. Maybe it really is useful, but I don’t feel that there’s a hole in my life that needs filling in that fashion. From what I’ve read about it, here and elsewhere, there doesn’t seem to be anything on it that I wouldn’t be able to find in five minutes of searching when I actually needed it.
To me it just seems like one more thing that people use because it’s there, not because anyone really needed it to fill a void.
I don’t even know how to tweet.
How do we know how much anyone knows?
The good ones refer other people to listen to, they gather larger followings, refer you to sources that are useful to you. I followed a few people I thought would provide me with good info - they didn’t, so I dropped them. (I also send them a note saying, “stop spamming - it’s losing you followers”, or something. Some people think the important thing is to have followers, then say things useful - but it’s very much the other way around.
I started following Mark Cuban a few months ago. He tweets about once a week, and it’s always extremely interesting. He’s always talking about new technology, new markets, new ways of doing things, comments on inside media, etc. He doesn’t get personal, and doesn’t involve the NBA (much). It’s a very interesting feed.