Is Twitter the MySpace of Geekdom or Rise of the Microblogdum

I hate to add another Twitter post to the increasingly growing pile of Tweets, but it seems like there’s a certain behavior emerging from this new microverse worth commenting on. If you’re not sure what Twitter is, well, I’m not even going to address that problem.

There are basically 3 kinds of posts that are emerging relating to Twitter:

• Twitter sucks
• Twitter rules
• I rule Twitter

So let's look at some of the commentary out there, it's interesting, to say the least.

Twitter Sucks There’s some commentary out there that truly begs the question, “What’s so fascinating about Twitter?” My favorite post on this topic was written by good friend, Chris Heuer. Of course, Chris’ post is not really about how Twitter must die, just that it very well could.

The thing about Twitter, Flickr and other similarly architected services is that we like staying in touch with the people we care about, the people we WANT to have connecttions with. Unfortunately, and as I have been saying a lot lately - Humans Don’t Scale. Dunbar was really right - I am pretty much putting the Dunbar number in the same category as Newton’s laws of gravity. It is important to note that I am not hoping for its demise - far from it. I am however wondering what can be done about those of us that care about such things in thinking about some sort of guideliness to prevent usage patterns from destroying the incredible value we find in staying connected to the people we care about most.

Source: Social Media Club, “Is SxSW going to be the death of Twitter?”

Pete Cashmore’s post is just too good to pass up as well:

To some, it really feels like Twitter has stumbled upon a new blogging paradigm - short, to-the-point messages that let your friends, family and the world know exactly where you are and what you’re doing, every second of the day.

But others are asking: what’s the point? Those people just don’t get it. Clearly, Twitter is an amazing new way to blog about your cat.

Source: Mashable, “The Evolution of Blogging, Cat Version”

And let’s not forget this post tagged “annoying”:

If I ever catch me using Twitter please shoot me on the spot. I feel sick that Twitter has become popular enough that I found a need to even cover the service but the 18-25 crowd (and younger) is embracing Twitter and it is common knowledge that this group can drive sales and trends through the roof.

Twitter is yet one more example of a world obsessed with information and a constant need to be instantly gratified. I think it perfectly characterizes the excesses that American’s have come to expect in everyday life. I prefer old technologies like Caller-ID because it is actually useful — I can decided who I allow into my life.

Source: jemmille.com, “What the F*%k is Twitter?”

Emerging Thoughts: Quite a bit of Twitter seems to be very extraneous - more noise than signal. Of course, we’re increasingly able to distill value from social noise but Twitter still lacks some of the required controls to serve us best.

Twitter Rules Naturally, good and evil must be seemingly balanced in the universe which is why we have a league of supporters for Twitter. Interestingly, many of the people who are supporting it don’t necessarily rationalize the success of the system either.

Tara Hunt “defends” her initial love and use of Twitter:

There are many more reasons why I love Twitter and Twittering. I love the common language emerging from this less than 140 character medium. That people come up with clever words to describe Twitter phenomenon, which become a shared language between us.

I feel so strongly about it that it upsets me to see people reduce it to another friend collecting service or hype. It is compelling, interesting and captures the imagination of alot of people. Tell me other web apps these days that can say the same. It goes to show you, once again, that simple tools that disrupt are what we need to be concentrating on…not more ‘me too’ and ‘this will make me $$’. Sure, it’s human nature to dismiss something (or someone) gaining in popularity. Is it jealousy? Fear? I don’t know, but it certainly isn’t self-reflective.

Source: HorsePigCow, “Twits Twittering for the sake of Tweets: or that’s not why I twitter”

Steve Rubel gives an interesting take on this - drawing comparisons to Moore’s Law, amongst other things:

That brings me back to Twitter. Despite it's lack of management/search features, Twitter is downright addicting. I love it. It's brevity lets me blog more actively and at the same time engage in real-time conversations with my "followers" (as they call it). If things have seemed a little quieter over here, it's because I have been busier over there. (Here's my Twitter feed)

Source: MicroPersuasion, “Twitter, Human Attention and Moore’s Law”

Scott Karp adds in his usual, considered post - carrying the torch from Steve’s post:

I think Twitter is a well-executed application, which, like all technologies, is only good or bad in how it is used. What strikes me about Twitter is that it appears to be accentuating the natural exhibitionist and voyeuristic tendencies of avid blog writers and readers. While blog posts have traditionally been short, Twitter pushes this trend to the extreme, accentuating the attention deficit disorder that the web naturally fosters.

Source: The Blog Herald, “Twitter Lowers The Bar For Blogging”

Emerging Thoughts: Twitter fills an important gap in our lifestyle and behavior. As more and more people are drawn to the power of personal publishing, Twitter is creating a more gradual onramp for newcomers while keeping otherwise established participants engaged.

I Rule Twitter This last category, I’m not going to link to. Sam Sethi has a good rundown on just what’s happening. However, there is a recent rage, especially in light of the newest gizmo, Twitterholic.com. It seems there is outright competition to see who can get the most followers, friends, tweets and everything else in between.

The more and more I thought about this, the more and more it reminded me of MySpace. In that world, we’re mere mortals, in Twitter, we’re gods - at least for now ;) Turns out that I am not alone in this thinking. Min Jung Kim chimes in with a quite funny Haiku:

twitter defined as turning bunches of geeks to 14 year old girls.

danah boyd also adds her observations as well:

I think it's funny to watch my tech geek friends adopt a social tech. They can't imagine life without their fingers attached to a keyboard or where they didn't have all-you-can-eat phone plans. More importantly, the vast majority of their friends are tech geeks too. And their social world is relatively structurally continuous. For most 20/30-somethings, this isn't so. Work and social are generally separated and there are different friend groups that must be balanced in different ways.

Source: apophenia, “Tweet Tweet (some thoughts on Twitter)“

Emerging Thoughts: I think that it’s all interesting. The point I was trying to make is that all new and exciting tools often require context to grasp their impact on things. At this point in time, we’re not quite sure what Twitter will become - if anything more than a passing fad. For sure, many people are asking great questions, participating in the change, and adjusting their goggles.

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