{"id":947,"date":"2009-04-30T18:00:46","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T22:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/?p=947"},"modified":"2009-05-01T00:34:02","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T04:34:02","slug":"ive-had-it-with-you-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/2009\/04\/ive-had-it-with-you-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Had it With You, Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok.\u00a0 I was willing to give it a chance.\u00a0 But after reading this brief little blurb in Time:<\/a><\/p>\n

Years from now, when historians reflect on the time we are currently living in, the names Biz Stone and Evan Williams will be referenced side by side with the likes of Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, Philo Farnsworth, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… and now I’m mad.\u00a0 What a load of crap!<\/p>\n

Twitter, as far as I can tell, is totally and completely worthless.\u00a0 For me.\u00a0 And for pretty much everyone I’ve talked to in my circle of friends.<\/p>\n

It seems to be a revolutionary new way for people I don’t care about to say things I don’t care about and listen to the opinions of still more people I don’t care about.<\/p>\n

While the aggregation of all of the posts on Twitter could amount to ‘the next wave of culture’ or ‘news’ you could say that about anything.\u00a0 I could say that about the blogs I follow via Google Reader.\u00a0 Or about the items on McDonald’s Value Menu.\u00a0 Twitter is just data.\u00a0 Mass amounts of unweighted, subjective data.\u00a0 And while, yes, it does give you ‘access’ to people you otherwise might not get access to, I’d still say you’re fooling yourself if you think that access is unfiltered.<\/p>\n

Do you really think Sarah Palin updates her own Twitter account? Oprah? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Ashton Kutcher? Maybe.\u00a0 But it could just as easily be their press agents.\u00a0 Or their interns.<\/p>\n

To call it social networking is a lie.\u00a0 It’s almost entirely anti-social.\u00a0 You post talking points and assume someone somewhere cares.\u00a0 The ‘conversation’ barely exists (unlike Facebook, where conversation is the whole point).<\/p>\n

So fine.\u00a0 Let the media people all hang on each others’ words until their heads explode.\u00a0 Let the teeny-boppers follow Ashton Kuscher.\u00a0 Let the Republicans follow Sarah Palin.\u00a0 But count me out.<\/p>\n

I don’t see anything Twitter has to offer me that hasn’t already been rolled into Facebook’s latest update, or into something like FriendFeed (that aggregates everything people have already posted).\u00a0 And I already have a blog, thank you.\u00a0 I appreciate that I don’t feel lazy or uncreative enough to feel daunted by word count potentially greater than 140 characters.\u00a0 I like writing.<\/p>\n

And the funniest thing is that Twitter’s platform is still completely unstable.\u00a0 People have complained about their service being jittery nonstop for the past year.\u00a0 And now, even in light of all of this media attention, they still can’t seem to get it together.<\/p>\n

I’m not making any predictions because… sadly… I’ll probably be wrong. But let’s just say I wouldn’t mind if Twitter turns out to be a bad trend<\/a> (like 80s neon and AOL) that people just try to forget they were excited about after 3 months.<\/p>\n

Maybe we can focus our attention on more curious things like the supposedly game-changing Wolfram Alpha<\/a>, and what on earth that could be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/strong>Oh great. Anyone have any guesses as to why Apple is now, so to speak, sucking Twitter’s dick<\/a>?\u00a0 I’m sorry…. a Triumph of Humanity<\/em>? Come on! A cure for cancer.\u00a0 That’d be a triumph of humanity. The judges would even accept ‘a cure for Swine Flu.’\u00a0 But Twitter?\u00a0 What, did the same guy who wrote the Time <\/a>article write this one too?\u00a0 Maybe he gets paid to publish in bulk.<\/p>\n

Man, I didn’t like you before, Twitter. But now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok.\u00a0 I was willing to give it a chance.\u00a0 But after reading this brief little blurb in Time: Years from now, when historians reflect on the time we are currently living in, the names Biz Stone and Evan Williams will be referenced side by side with the likes of Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[373,390,391,387],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-and-raves","tag-facebook","tag-friendfeed","tag-time-magazine","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}