Twitter Not Just About Lunch
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James Joyner | Monday, November 2, 2009 |
Norm Geras remains baffled at the Twitter phenomenon. Responding to a column by Nicholas Lezard, Norm asks:
(1) Why would I want to record my daily activities for other people to follow? (2) Why would I want to follow the detailed doings of anyone else over the course of a day, and another day, and another day?
You, of course, wouldn’t.
But that’s not what Twitter is to most of us. Despite the query “What are you doing now?” on the posting window, most people that I follow are posting links and commentary on matters of interest to me. Here’s a screencap of my TweetDeck screen at the moment:
Now, I’m not saying that every single posting there contributes to my net wisdom. But I get more than enough interesting information to be worth 30-60 minutes of my day scanning, re-tweeting, and posting my own bits.
Lezard seems to think Twitter is mostly about what people are having for lunch and the like. And for all I know, perhaps it is. Then again, so is “blogging.” But just as I don’t read blogs that are mostly about people’s cats or the mundane daily activities of their lives, neither do I actively follow those sorts of Twitter accounts.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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I have my own deep skepticism regarding Twitter--namely that I don't see the great utility of trying to get information by interpreting a series of 140 character messages, one-sided replies, and blind links. The web is quite capable of delivering fully parsed sentences, clear dialogues, descriptive links, not to mention much more besides.
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