Why is blogworld atwitter over Twitter?
What do you get when you combine the worst aspects of blogging, instant messaging and mobile texting? I’m not quite sure, either, but it’s called Twitter.com.
Attendees of this month’s SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, were atwitter over Twitter, naming it the year’s top blogging application.
But the service of San Francisco-based Obvious Corp. might go down as one of the era’s silliest fads, along with unreadable MySpace designs and blog widgets that display pictures of recent visitors.
The idea behind Twitter, as its slogan suggests, is for users to answer the question “What are you doing?” by typing messages of 140 characters or less into a browser or mobile text-messaging device.
These deep thoughts leap into the world as blog posts — as well as text and instant messages to blather-stream subscribers. But it probably won’t take many posts about midnight fridge raids and toenails ripping through socks for readers to conclude their Twitter pals are turning into twits.
Remember the “Seinfeld” episode in which Jerry and George pitch NBC “a show about nothing”? At one point Costanza asks a network executive, “What did you do today?”
“I got up and came to work,” the exec replies.
“There’s a show!” George exclaims. “That’s a show.”
That’s also a Twitter.
During one recent minute Thursday morning, users posted the following urgent updates:
“Tried Scottish oatmeal this morning, very impressed. Will have to soon phase out the Quaker oats.”
“reading a blog, returning emails”
“taxes are DONE! FINALLY!”
“writing a newsletter about interactive outdoor advertising”
People who use the service as a brain dump are called Twitterers. Let’s dub those with the sense to flee it Flitterers. Don’t we already ignore enough inane e-mails and IMs from the chatty Cathies in our lives?
It takes an outsize ego to believe anyone wants a running monologue of our comings, goings and coupon-clippings. Of course, if Narcissus showed up at a high school or college today, he’d be pegged as one of the more modest students.
Beyond enabling navel-gazing teens to star in their very own “Truman Show,” Twitter makes a perfect blogging platform for celebrities. They have almost nothing to say, yet plenty of idiots want to hear them say it.
But outside of rehab, when would true A-listers find time to chronicle their every macrobiotic meal and paparazzi encounter?
What we really need is a prominent person with a vested interest in direct outreach. What we need is a politician.
Enter John Edwards, the presidential candidate with more than 1,400 Twitter “friends.” But while he and his wife, Elizabeth, announced Thursday her cancer had returned and he’d be continuing his campaign, their Twitter blog remained silent. (A staff posting later thanked readers for their “twitters … of support.”)
I was glad to see it. Making such a serious announcement via Twitter would be like sending Evites to a funeral.
Keep it short and superfluous — that’s the Twitter way. Which is why it’s likely to burn itself out as a social-networking phenomenon sooner rather than later.
But even if Twitter fades as a method for launching blogs, it’ll probably still be prized for various niche uses.
Travel groups can create pages to keep in contact with each other on the road, for instance. It’s a great tool for reporting on conferences, meetings and other events. Investors would benefit from financial-news feeds. And the BBC is already employing the service to create a Twitter ticker of headlines and story links.
Just for fun, one Chicago-area bar reportedly scrolls Twitter posts across a large TV screen. It probably beats watching the Cubs most days.
Many users also write Twitter haiku (“twaiku”) to blow off steam. Here’s my contribution:
Narcissistic geeks
unleash spring flood of babble.
Time to unplug now.