What a Twit(ter)

by admin on March 29, 2007

in Innovation

I must be one of the few people who doesn’t get Twitter, the SMS service that delivers short messages to either a mobile phone and/or over the web. According to the FT (sorry – paywall):

Warning against the temptation to reject Twitter as a flash in the pan, Mr Schwartz (CEO Sun Microsystems) added: “YouTube was funny until it was worth $1.65bn (£840m) to someone,” a reference to Google’s purchase of the company last year.

To my mind there’s a differrence. YouTube showcases some great material and often turns up with helpful gems. Twitter is something else. Why on earth would I want to send SMSs every time I ‘do’ something? How quickly might you get bored [if not already -:)] if I was to send messages something like:

Twinkle (cat 1) just pounced on Isabella (cat 2) which made Stella (dog) start barking insanely or Jude just made a great omelette or…heaven forbid: Dia’s got some great deals in the frozen fish section. As if anyone cares?

Yet the craze seems to have caught on like wildfire. According to Phil Wainewright:

Twitter is currently getting 70,000 messages posted to its site a day, and many of them are distributed to large numbers of subscribers

Hell’s teeth. That’s a lot of texting. But then James Governor tells an interesting anecdote:

At about 11:30 this morning I found out on Twitter that Shai Agassi had resigned from SAP, to spend more time with his sustainable energy…I found out through Twitter, through some of the sharpest minds in SAP’s dev ecosystem (Mat, Ed). Which is cool.

Hmm…the news broke in the Wall Street Journal at: 1.11pm according to email registered at my inbox around the same equivalent time as James. If I did not have access to my computer then Twitter would have been useful in that regard. But given there is a 140 character limit to Twitter messages, it’s not as though I could have done much useful with the message anyway.

Bottom line? I still don’t get Twitter except as a potentially expensive waste of time. Sorry people – I may enjoy writing about innovation, but I’m with Andrew Keen when he says:

This doesn’t excite me. When I want to tell someone what I’m doing, I either tell them in person, call them on the telephone or send them an email.

And if that makes me Luddite of the Day – OK.

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Dennis Howlett

James makes an interesting point as we're both part of that community. Worth thinking about contextual useage.

Danno - I'm a social scientist by education so I think I have a fair handle on human intereaction at both social and psychological levels. That information is an my About page.

Yes - I can see the group send/response value. But for me it has to have a business context. Otherwise it is a waste of time and money in a business context that does nothing to add value to those relationships. The exchange of raw data on the other hand might well be an unintended but useful consequence.

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Danno

You misunderstand two things about Twitter, I think: 1) The basic human interest in other people and 2) that there is no way besides email to send a message to all of your friends.

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Dennis Howlett

And what about Things You Do with Twitter? How freakin' cool is that? Oh heck - I forgot to tell you - I'm having a cup of tea and the dog just farted.

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David Terrar

Sig,
That makes sense now (and I have to admit I'm thinking of putting the Twitter widget on my new blog makeover!).

But I thought you'd all be amused by this Twitterholics cartoon I saw courtesy of Amber.

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sig

I concur! Just dipping my toes and shut off the SMS function I did. That was beyond annoying (the Blackberry function is enough - with Twitter SMS my phone would be in constant buzzing mode!).

Actually the only remote excuse I found for trying it out was that widget on the blog enabling a message like Dennis would have needed when he was sick... kind of non-obtrusive "I'm not out of ideas, just out of breath", or "traveling" or whatever.

We'll see if the widget stays.

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alastair

guess you will start to get somewhat annoyed after you get 100 texts telling you the same story!

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David Terrar

Hi Den,
I find it quite intriguing how it's caught on with so many of the blogging fraternity. For example Sig has just put the widget on his site that shows your latest Twitter message. I've been trying it out for several weeks. It's interesting to find out what your friends are thinking at any given moment, but it's pretty intrusive too. I can see some sensible uses, but I'm ambivalent on the topic. I'll continue with my experiment to see if I can find any real value for a bit longer.

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