Michele doesn’t like Twitter it seems:
It’s probably the biggest waste of time I’ve come across in years.
Does anyone really give a damn what other people are doing all the time.
Michele says:
While we may all do interesting things a lot of what we do is incredibly boring. This is why I own a DVD player, a TV, books etc.,
(Keep in mind Michele blogs about special-edition soundtracks that he buys from Amazon.)
Someone telling the world that they are sitting on a bus isn’t going to improve my life. If I wanted to know where someone was I could ring them, email them, IM them .. you get the idea..
If I want to know what you are planning to do I can check your calendar / diary (if you have a public one)
The best bit:
If it was “hip� to jump of cliffs would you all do it?
I do believe that at one stage or another, all of these arguments were used to knock blogging too. Simple way of not getting worked up about Twitter is don’t fucking subscribe, then you won’t have to read about what people are doing on the bus, what people are eating now or what boring fucking soundtrack they just bought. The same goes for blogging. Don’t subscribe if you don’t want to read about whatever. It isn’t forced on you. Don’t want to read about what people are doing with blogs, don’t read. If you don’t like that people are blogging about Twitter, then unsubscribe. RSS empowers you, you control what you read and who you read. Nothing is forced on you.
There was a lot of hype and relentless chatter when GMail started a few years ago and that was just bloody email with a little bit of AJAX and a lot of space. Twitter is no different in the revolution game and is not something special. People seem to think that just because the volume of people talking about Twitter is great, that it automatically means they think it’ll change the world. Quite a silly assumption to make.
Twitter is Gomi, it is shite, it’s called Twitter for a good reason. So what if it is a fad, nobody is saying it’s the next big thing, nobody is making you use it. The usual tech snobbery is again happening here. “Oh gawd, you use a PC”, “Oh gawd, you use Windows and not ubuntu”, “Oh gawd my shit don’t stink, yours does”
As a social experiment, I find Twitter interesting but what I like more is that people are getting creative and having fun and coming up with useful and useless things to do with it. What you can do is quite restrictive yet many people are working with these scarce resources and having a laugh. I’ve seen more focus and creativity from the Irish tech bloggers over this than most stuff in the past few years. Twitter is tech play-doh but I guess some would rather us keep quiet about us making messes.
[…] Michele has weighed in and said he things the whole thing is dumb. Damien has replied and said if you don’t like them don’t read them. […]
Damien, are you being provocative on purpose?
Surely Michele setting you off on a rant like this could equally set me off on a rant saying ‘if you don’t like what Michele is saying unsubscribe, don’t blog about it…’ ad so on we go ad infinitum…
As for Twitter, I’m not subscribed coz I think it sucks as an idea – I am however waiting for someone to come up with an interesting use for it or similar technology as I’m sure they will.
You’ve mentioned at least one possible idea yourself re politic stuff…
[…] Fair play to the people who use it, to those who sound as if they are wetting their pants trying to promote it and those who hate it but from my perspective these type of (non-useful) lack of content sites are going to do nothing but clutter the web. The web industry is only getting over MFA sites and we certainly don’t need any more non-helpful junk sites out there. […]
Let me reduce this entire post to Twitter-speak: “Just because Damien likes something doesn’t mean we all have to like it so there.”
Imagine if you could reduce all your daily readings to 140 characters or less. Such is the world of geek Twitterdom. All you have to do is find the secret passageway into the banality of this new space. As others have suggested, it’s not for everyone. Some rather prefer highbrow blogging. Others like their Bebo just the way it is. Twitter is somewhere in the middle but it hasn’t settled into its niche. Give it one general election and then decide if it’s worth a blogger’s or journalist’s attention. The cool thing about the Attention Economy is that many touchpoints exist inside it. If you don’t fancy trivial twits, you can get your measure of babbling on several mailing lists or discussion boards. And if all else fails, there’s always the comments on Slashdot to keep you grounded.
[…] If you don’t like it, “then don’t subscribe” […]
The IT Aristocracy
Michele got his knickers in a twit and Damien tried strangling him with them. Now while I enjoy twitter immensely – it’s good sociable fun – I don’t feel the need to defend it but Damien has nailed something far
*Rapturous applause*
If nothing else, it’s got the web-o-sphere up in arms. It’s certainly one of the most divisive issues that’s come along in a good while.
from digg:
http://web1979.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/rip-twitter-2007-2007/
Bit mouthy and confused there Damien. Is Twitty the new blogs or the new Gmail or just shite? 🙂
[…] I predict that when teenagers discover Twitter the increase in txt speak will put off everyone else. Not that it will matter at that stage. Twitter will go on to become a global teen phenomenon much like myspace or bebo. Oh how we’ll gnash our teeth then. The negative feedback now won’t be anything like it will be later on! “Proper bloggers” might just ignore it but I doubt it. We They need something to bitch about and it’s an easy target! […]
Twitter puzzles the media-studies types an awful lot. In about 6 months time I guarantee there will be bucketloads of PhD proposals on how the combinations of ‘blogging and texting’ (blexting, obviously, a much better name!) are affecting the development of the English language. Personally I don’t see the point, but I’m a non-Bebo reactionary. (As my younger brother once said, I “committed bebocide”). But certainly on a quick look at various users, it seems much closer to changing status messages on MSN/facebook than the more media-like (yes I know that is a contested phrase) vibe that a lot of bloggers and blog-academics are into. Which in itself is interesting.
Damien how old are you? 7?
“Great to see Michele bitching about Twitter. http://url.ie/373 Always good when curmugdeons get upset. Twitter is very much web 0.5 not 2.0″ via your own Twitter A/C.
I remember my days at AOL when my colleagues said online marketing would never take off… I had to learn how to build sites to teach the trainers. I did one based on Wexford and said I could possibly make money from advertising for restaurants and perhaps even allow hotels to rent rooms online given the amount of traffic coming from the US… emmm
Conclusion, some people will like twitter amongst other things and some people won’t. Don’t subscribe if you don’t like it. It’s one thing for people to come up with great ideas but it’s another to actually do something with them! It’s also another thing to put down other people’s ideas without knowing the potential benefits.
omg, I have no idea which of you is more right…
Personally, I’ll probably never use Twitter, but that doesn’t mean it’s up to me to tell everyone else not to use it or that it’s shite.
Here’s my twittr post for the day “Just read an entry on Damien Mulleys blog, the amount of self belief this asshole has is inspiring!”
I have to agree with frankp ‘if you don’t like what Michele is saying unsubscribe, don’t blog about it’ which is why I’m unsubscribing you. Good bye!
Just a note about Ubuntu – I have always found it to be on the other side of that snobbery vs trendiness fence, as many oldschool Linux users resent the tide of yuppie bandwagon-hoppers blogging about the wonder of apt-get. I would have used Mac OS X vs Windows as an example instead 😉
On Twitter – was never much of a text messager/commenter myself, so I’ll probably give it a miss. Unless of course there are a few decent flamewars to fuel my mild curiosity.
What has really impressed me about Twitter in a little over a week’s use of it is the ease with which I have built up a really powerful network of “Followers” (I hate that term – too many cult religion overtones).
It has taken me three years of blogging to create an equally powerful audience.
Twitter is a new, powerful conversation stream. Some people want to be part of the conversation. Some don’t. The conversation carries on regardless.
Michele is a man? eww!