Five Things That Are Wrong with Twitter

Use private messages…
From Twitter:

Fun Stuff: friends, favorites, and stats!

There’s more to Twitter than OFF and ON! Use the commands below to send private messages, mark updates as favorites, or even remind someone to update their Twitter page if you’re wondering what they’re doing.
@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

WHOIS username
retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

NUDGE username
reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf.
Example: nudge biz

FAV username
marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time)
Example: fav al3x
STATS
this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and which words you’re tracking.

INVITE phone number
will send an SMS invite to a friend’s mobile phone.
Example: Invite 415 555 1212

1. It is fun to twitter @ other people, but it’s only fun for you and the person you’re twittering @. To all third parties, it is boring
You only see that if you subscribe to both parties. So it is presumed that you care.
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2. It adds one more link to the chain of things I do to avoid working (checking work e-mail, checking blog comments, checking home e-mail, checking Facebook, and now … )
Actually, it allows you to check up on people without going to those places.
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3. It is wrong to be obsessed with how many (= how few) Followers you have
It’s OK, Lev. Your follower count will be filled with spammers shortly.
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4. One day Tinyurl will break, then we’ll all be screwed
True dat.
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5. It keeps you from blogging
It IS blogging. Why doe that seem to escape people who blog?

1. Unless you’re telling @oprah what to do.
2. I’ve been twittering for a couple of years and it hasn’t noticeably undermined my productivity.
3. Agreed. I’d like to think I twitter the same way I did when I only had a handful of followers, but I’m not sure if that’s true.
4. As will twitter.
5. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.

There’s a comparable list here…
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/04/why_twitter_is_evil.php

@Church, point 1 isn’t true. If I have a tweet with an @ in it anyone following me still sees it. But Lev’s point I disagree with anyway, because with almost any twitter app (maybe even the webpage by now) you can easily navigate to the original tweet if it is a reply, or to the person’s tweets if it isn’t. Unless someone is twittering “@soandso yes” I don’t think it’s a big problem… people should be RT that stuff anyway for context.
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Re Point 3 I don’t know if it’s wrong or not to be concerned about follower numbers… For someone like me it’d be kind of pathetic, but if you are doing it for non-personal reasons then I guess it’d make sense.

@Rorschach: Not if you lead the post with the @ symbol.
E.g., If I typed “@gaiusbaltar You are awesome!” then @leverus wouldn’t see it, but you and I would.

@Church: Does it depend on the app? I’m looking at my Tweetie flow right now and I see plenty of tweets starting with @names that I don’t follow.
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Sorry for jacking the thread…

@Rorschach: Possibly. I use twitter and hahlo, myself.

@church I think people who have an aversion to Twitter is that it’s a microblog and it tends to lack substance in a short sentence. While I myself haven’t caught the twitter fire, my response to such critics is that there are plenty of blogs out there about nothing and lack substance. You can wax eloquent for hours and pages but produce nothing and in a short statement contain the meaning of the world and humanity. Well maybe that hour of crisis in your life anyway. So tweet away. It doesn’t matter what forms of communication are out there, there is always someone who will abuse it or spout off ridiculous notions, whether its graffiti on a wall that “BSG is gay” and youtube videos of you love for Brittney spears people will be out there.

Well, I’ve got a tottaly different view. Check it out:
http://xfactorofinnovation2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/twitter-abuse-the-trend/

It all depends on how Twitter is used. For example messages of what you are doing at that moment do not add much value to other peoples lives. Twitter functions so well, because the tweets are of limited length, but it would function much better if also the number of tweets per day would be limited. That way people make sure that the important messages are tweeted and leave out the garbage. See also http://blog.jeroenhoekman.com/will_the_chichat_kill_Twitter.html