# Explain the allure of Twitter **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 24, 2009, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271 "2009-02-24T21:16:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Brandus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@Brandus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brandus)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/61 "2009-05-28T19:37:33Z")
I wish people would stop acting like it’s a cutting edge technology. It’s a text message. On a web page. We’ve been able to post “lol at work it sucks” online for 15 years. It was called Geocities. Similarly, dumb events like “the first twitter from space” and other promotional events are utterly retarded. ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/62 "2009-05-28T19:43:29Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I am thoroughly annoyed by the fact that regular non-news people do this. Cite? Seriously. Everyone has apparently decided that all Twitterers do it post about shitting and their cats, or some combination thereof. 1. Not true. B) So does the rest of the Internet. **ETA:** What **Dead Badger** said. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/63 "2009-05-28T20:29:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I don’t need to know that your “head hurts” or you are “sad it’s monday” or “GO YANKS!” in real time. Neither do I - I find these types of messages amazing annoying. But I’m also an avid reader on Twitter. Go figure. Know why? **Because I subscribe to content that is useful to me** - not to content that is useless. It’s really quite easy to do (in fact, it’s pretty hard to subscribe to an endless stream of crap). I’m an avid fantasy baseball player. I try to be as competitive as possible, and want to stay on top of important information. Twitter is perfect for this. I subscribe to no more than a dozen feeds, who give me all the information I could handle over a 5 minute coffee break. I have an injury expert (injuryexpert), a media expert (jasoncollette), and a few select fantasy sites that provide useful info. I’ll add some ocassionally, and if they start sending crap, I delete them. Criticizing Twitter for mundane “my head hurts” information is like criticizing the SDMB because you’ve seen the crap they post at some other message board. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2009, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/64 "2009-05-28T21:25:03Z")
> [@Brandus](#): > > I wish people would stop acting like it’s a cutting edge technology. Who is doing so? Very few of the supposed (gack) “Web 2.0” breakthroughs have involved much cutting edge technology. They’re social constructs, not technological. Subtle differences in the way they’re set up create large differences in the way they’re used, and these create interest to differing degrees. Twitter is getting a lot of press at the moment, largely because the media at large has very little imagination, but its characteristics are indeed unique and deserve a modicum of attention over and above “it’s no different than Geocities.” Twitter is interesting because it’s got a very low barrier to publishing (which is why people who don’t understand it fixate on the inanities), but also _strong filtering_, which gets completely ignored. The former means you get stuff on there you wouldn’t otherwise; the latter means you can find the good stuff, even though the majority is inane. I find it interesting to follow people like [Ben Goldacre](http://twitter.com/bengoldacre), a UK science writer; it’s nice to see what grabs his attention on a day-to-day basis. Even if he’s just posting links, his filter on what’s out there is a useful perspective, and I get to see things I wouldn’t otherwise. Following comedians I like gives me frequent chuckles (Bill Bailey is particularly weird), and mini-communities spring up around specialist topics. For the most part, the people who are interesting in more traditional forms of media are the people who are interesting on Twitter. The difference is that the interaction between them and their audience is closer, and more fine-grained (and, I suppose, that on a superficial level they are no more important as individuals than said audience). You may not find this compelling, you may not be attracted to it at all. But if people insist it’s just idiots texting the world about their cats, then they haven’t made any effort to understand it at all. Which is fine, of course, but they could at least try not to insist on their definition of what it is. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/65 "2009-05-29T02:15:02Z")
I would wager there are very few Tweeters who are there just to read what their favourite band is posting, and whom never post anything. It seems to me to be like Facebook- people sign up with the intention of just seeing what their friends from High School are doing (or keeping in touch with family overseas) and before long most of them are sending each other little drinks, announcing they’ve become a fan of some band, and generally getting caught up in The Facebook Experience, with its attendant boozy pub photos, holiday pics, and OMG WE’RE SO FUN! Sure, there are people who use FB and Myspace on a limited basis and don’t get caught up in the OMG-ness of it, but that’s not the image it has in public consciousness. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/66 "2009-05-29T03:01:10Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > I would wager there are very few Tweeters who are there just to read what their favourite band is posting, and whom never post anything. No one has said ANYTHING contrary to this. The point isn’t that there are people who just listen and don’t talk. The point is that the average person who posts “I just washed my hands!!!” isn’t being listened to by anyone. > [@](#): > > It seems to me to be like Facebook- people sign up with the intention of just seeing what their friends from High School are doing (or keeping in touch with family overseas) and before long most of them are sending each other little drinks You have no idea what you’re talking about. People don’t sign up with that intention - those people are already on Facebook (which is tied to Twitter). > [@](#): > > Sure, there are people who use FB and Myspace on a limited basis and don’t get caught up in the OMG-ness of it, but that’s not the image it has in public consciousness. And that image is misplaced and incorrect. Consider yourself informed (regarding Twitter). ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/67 "2009-05-29T04:18:30Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > No one has said ANYTHING contrary to this. The point isn’t that there are people who just listen and don’t talk. The point is that the average person who posts “I just washed my hands!!!” isn’t being listened to by anyone. And I don’t think anyone has said anything to the contrary. But the point that I and others are making is that people who are posting “I just washed my hands!” are doing so in the hope that _someone_ is listening to them. In other words, they’re attention-whoring and displaying typical Gen-Y ME!ME!ME! behaviour. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/68 "2009-05-29T12:36:20Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > And I don’t think anyone has said anything to the contrary. But the point that I and others are making is that people who are posting “I just washed my hands!” are doing so in the hope that _someone_ is listening to them. In other words, they’re attention-whoring and displaying typical Gen-Y ME!ME!ME! behaviour. Fair enough. But do we have anything to say that “most” people on Twitter do this as their primary use of Twitter? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/69 "2009-05-29T12:45:01Z")
Just a note to those people who are explaining Twitter in terms of Facebook – I dunno WTF Facebook is EITHER! GOD DAMMIT, I’ve just got used to MESSAGE BOARDS! WTF distinguishes a blog from a Live Journal? (I’m not hearing much about LJ anymore, is it already obsolete?) How many of these online verbal masturbation schemes are there? Oh, never mind, I don’t have enough lube for them all anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/70 "2009-05-29T13:12:43Z")
A livejournal _is_ a blog, but you can add other blogs/journals to a “friends list”, which is just a reading list/feed of journals. And, no, it’s still quite active. It’s where I spend most of my online time. As to these sites being mastubatory, do you think most of the people posting to this thread or this board really give a damn about what you think? Most of us are here to impart our “wisdom”, watch the other monkeys dance, or do some combination of both. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/71 "2009-05-29T13:35:44Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Fair enough. But do we have anything to say that “most” people on Twitter do this as their primary use of Twitter? I don’t have any hard numbers handy (My research budget is zero, but if I could secure some funding to spend all day reading every Tweet made and assessing its ME! factor/Twitter Users that could be changed ;)), but Vodafone Australia are currently running a TV ad for their unlimited cap which includes a segment on Voice Twitter, in which an unkempt twentysomething guy Voice Tweets inanities such as “Kevin is sick of microwave pizza, Sadface” and “Kevin has the hots for the Newsreader Chick, Wink”. I’d say they know who their target market is, and it’s people who feel the need to update their Tweets from the phone. And there’s obviously enough of them for Vodafone to identify them as a desirable target market. Which means there’s a lot of them. Which means the desire to tweet incessantly about ephemera and trivia is also fairly widespread. Ergo, I think it’s pretty safe to say that a majority of people on Twitter are using it for that purpose. QED. 😃 Seriously though, you personally might be using Twitter in some sensible kind of way, but my experiences with “New Media”, “Web 2.0” and the other trendy buzzwords that mean “Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, n’ shit, Yo” differ markedly from yours, it would seem. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/72 "2009-05-29T13:47:43Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > It seems to me to be like Facebook- people sign up with the intention of just seeing what their friends from High School are doing (or keeping in touch with family overseas) and before long most of them are sending each other little drinks, announcing they’ve become a fan of some band, and generally getting caught up in The Facebook Experience, with its attendant boozy pub photos, holiday pics, and OMG WE’RE SO FUN! I don’t mean to be snarky, but if you really are studying this stuff for a Masters degree, you’re going to have to display a little more intellectual curiosity, and insist on your own preconceptions quite a lot less. Unless the title is “a taxonomy of popular caricatures of social networks” of course, in which case you’re bang on target. I agree that from a superficial perspective, Twitter looks like just the status updates from Facebook. But that perspective _is_ superficial. It completely ignores the network characteristics (being half the point of social _networks_), which seems to me to be a fairly glaring omission if you’re trying to understand this stuff to postgrad level. > [@](#): > > Sure, there are people who use FB and Myspace on a limited basis and don’t get caught up in the OMG-ness of it, but that’s not the image it has in public consciousness. I thought we were discussing what Twitter is, not what it’s perceived to be. Clearly people perceive it as inane and annoying, based largely on mistaken assumptions about how it is used in practice. If you’re really interested in social networks, you’d be focusing on the network characteristics, rather than zeroing in on what is essentially noise, and pronouncing it representative. Look at what attracts a broad _audience_; you’ll find that it’s not crap. Amusingly enough, _Time_ magazine are getting in on the act, brilliantly citing a joke from UK comedian Peter Serafinowicz as [proof that Twitterers are narcissists](http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/its-long-past-times-bedtime/). ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/73 "2009-05-29T13:58:56Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Neither do I - I find these types of messages amazing annoying. But I’m also an avid reader on Twitter. Go figure. Know why? > > **Because I subscribe to content that is useful to me** - not to content that is useless. It’s really quite easy to do (in fact, it’s pretty hard to subscribe to an endless stream of crap). > > I’m an avid fantasy baseball player. I try to be as competitive as possible, and want to stay on top of important information. Twitter is perfect for this. I subscribe to no more than a dozen feeds, who give me all the information I could handle over a 5 minute coffee break. I have an injury expert (injuryexpert), a media expert (jasoncollette), and a few select fantasy sites that provide useful info. I’ll add some ocassionally, and if they start sending crap, I delete them. > > Criticizing Twitter for mundane “my head hurts” information is like criticizing the SDMB because you’ve seen the crap they post at some other message board. Although I don’t use it that much, I can see using Twitter to send feeds to my cellphone for stuff I care about. But if I need to communicate someone, I don’t see how it’s any different from a text message. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/74 "2009-05-29T14:08:37Z")
**Dead Badger** , I understand what you’re saying, but Twitter/Facebook etc are only a small part of the stuff I’m studying (My main focus is International Journalism, with some side research into the changes Newspapers will have to make to stay viable). I don’t have the time (or the money) to get into an in-depth study of Twitter and Facebook, and even if I did I just don’t find the subject _that_ interesting, and by the time I got around to completing my research something else would have come along and rendered it all moot- I don’t hate Twitter or Facebook, believe it or not. I just don’t think they’re the Great Media Revolution that people expected them to be, and whilst I don’t deny their usefulness as part of social networking, I also think that there’s a lot of truth in the caricatures, and that the social networking they’re part of isn’t necessarily _meaningful_ social networking. (That doesn’t mean all social networking is a meaningless waste of time- it isn’t. But there’s a difference between using Facebook to stay in touch with relatives and friends overseas and sharing experiences with them, and tweeting everyone you know with “Jim likes his new pants”. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/75 "2009-05-29T14:24:20Z")
> [@Dr.Woo](#): > > Based on what I can see without joining, which ain’t much, it looks like it has all the stuff I hate about Facebook, and none of the stuff I like. Coincidentally, I spent 30 minutes this morning trying to further restrict my Facebook shit. I do not really want to know that somebody is tired or bored or squeezing someone’s anal glad (thank you **Kalhoun** ). Bet you’d want to know if somebody was squeezing _your_ anal gland. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/76 "2009-05-29T14:45:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > But if I need to communicate someone, I don’t see how it’s any different from a text message. You shouldn’t be using Twitter to communicate with one particular person. As you pointed out, that’s what text messages are for. Twitter (for the average person) should be a source of information, not a communication medium. I’m not and you’re not interesting enough to provide anything useful, unless you find yourself audience to something noteworthy (“OMG - the mailbox down the street exploded! #mailbox #explosion” - “At U2 concert - Bono just announced he’s running for President of the World. #bono #U2”). How we (we = average person) should be using it is for searches of pretty specific information that would otherwise be lost in the jumble on Google. I’m a fantasy baseball fanatic. Today, Matt Wieters is being called up to start for the Orioles. This is huge. Doing a search for #Wieters gives me excellent information on the subject. searching for “wieters roto” sorts it out even better. Doing the same search on Google turns up crap. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/77 "2009-05-29T15:02:32Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > But there’s a difference between using Facebook to stay in touch with relatives and friends overseas and sharing experiences with them, and tweeting everyone you know with “Jim likes his new pants”. How many times must you be told that this isn’t what people look for on Twitter? Twitter is not a social network in the Facebook style; relationships in Twitter correlate far less with real-life relationships, and are far more like a subscription to interesting sources of information. This is crucial, and yet you’re completely ignoring it. Of the people I follow, I personally know less a fifth, and they very rarely tweet (being, like me, on there more to find interesting feeds). I’m not _friends_ with Ben Goldacre or Bill Bailey; I just like hearing their semi-random thoughts, because they’re really quite interesting. You say you understand me, but it feels like I’m repeating myself and not getting through at all. You’ve got a preconception about what Twitter is, and you simply won’t be budged from it. The network isn’t anything like Facebook’s, and the content that gets subscribed to isn’t anything like this caricature that you keep repeating. I don’t know how else to say it, but it just isn’t getting through. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/78 "2009-05-29T21:19:55Z")
Y’know, there are people who disapprove of verbal chit-chat or small talk, and who can’t just hang out and talk to others without a specific purpose. These people are generally considered anti-social or at least lacking in social skills. Just sayin’… ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/79 "2009-05-30T01:28:19Z")
> [@Dead\_Badger](#): > > How many times must you be told that this isn’t what people look for on Twitter? I suspect it’s not what _YOU_ look for in Twitter. Our experiences differ. That’s all there is to it. You keep insisting on one thing being “The Reality”, yet I’ve observed something completely different. > [@](#): > > Twitter is not a social network in the Facebook style; relationships in Twitter correlate far less with real-life relationships, and are far more like a subscription to interesting sources of information. This is crucial, and yet you’re completely ignoring it. Of the people I follow, I personally know less a fifth, and they very rarely tweet (being, like me, on there more to find interesting feeds). I’m not _friends_ with Ben Goldacre or Bill Bailey; I just like hearing their semi-random thoughts, because they’re really quite interesting. > > You say you understand me, but it feels like I’m repeating myself and not getting through at all. You’ve got a preconception about what Twitter is, and you simply won’t be budged from it. The network isn’t anything like Facebook’s, and the content that gets subscribed to isn’t anything like this caricature that you keep repeating. I don’t know how else to say it, but it just isn’t getting through. Famous people qualify as “Media”. Bill Bailey’s Twitter tool feed is a form of publicity. So is Stephen Fry’s. I’m not talking about Famous People using Twitter. I’m talking about boring, everyday people posting pointless, boring everyday shit. Everyday people who tweet usually _are_ posting the pointless shit that gets caricatured. Just because you aren’t doesn’t mean that vast numbers of other people aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271/80 "2009-05-30T04:33:04Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > Reading twitters lets them pretend they are on the cutting edge and aware of every current event without actually having to do any work. > > Writing twitters feeds their delusion that they are important and the rest of the world is hanging on their every word. Thank you. I was tempted to try it, but you have set me straight. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-allure-of-twitter/487271.md?page=5)