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Twitter – Good or Evil?

posted on May 30, 2007


CNET is running opposite perspectives on social messaging service Twitter.

Caroline McCarthy is writing in favor of the service…

The beauty of Twitter is that, unlike a full-out blog, there’s no obligation to be philosophical, thought-provoking or grammatically sound. Because it doesn’t require that kind of extra effort, it’s great for people like me who want to jump on the social-media bandwagon but don’t have the time to set up something elaborate on WordPress.

Meanwhile, Elinor Mills goes on the attack…

I don’t understand the need to spew out personal information and random thoughts to the world. And that’s just what Twitter is designed for: to be a medium through which you can share stream-of-conscious babblings with your friends and with anyone who has time to lurk on the Web site and read inane musings of strangers.

I gave Twitter a solid two weeks and then suddenly stopped using it. I just ran out of things to say, not to mention the time to say it. While I’ve not abandoned Twitter completely – it will be interesting to use it at next week’s SMX conference – I just found it to be too much effort.

Anyone else want to weigh-in? Love it, hate it, just started using it, just stopped? Let me know.


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  • http://www.danperry.com/ Dan Perry

    The main reason I like Twitter is the ability to go back through my postings (or are they called Twits?), and return to the place I was when I added them. Of course, I could do this with a blog, but now that Twitter has a mobile option for uploading, it’s perfect. No one subscribes to it (maybe the anti-social media?), but honestly, it’s not a big deal.

  • http://www.marketingneophyte.com Nic Darling

    I briefly delved into Twitter and almost immediately left it again. I have been thinking about returning to it in a more serious manner, but I’m not sure how to approach it. What kind of success have people had in using Twitter as a part of their marketing? How does one go about tying Twitter into the blogs and other social media that they are using?

    I will probably try it again, but I am not overly optimistic about an ongoing commitment.

  • http://riccardocampaci.wordpress.com/ Riccardo Campaci

    Never used. I cannot realize the usefullness of Twitter… spending time saying what people are doing? Why?

    Maybe I will give it a try in the future…

  • rick gregory

    evil.

    Ok, maybe not EVIL, but kinda arrogant and self-centered. The person sending out tweets is basically saying “I’m going to interrupt you with this thought.” Now, how many of those thoughts are worth the receiver’s time? Really? I’ve seen tweets about “I’m taking out the garbage” Yeah, SO??? Why on earth would I care? And why does the person sending that even thinking that anyone would care?

    Some people like Steve Rubel seem to use them as realtime link blogs… fine, but also kinda meh. Link blogs never really interested me and, again, why should I be interrupted when someone has found a link? I might be interested, but… put in on a blog – I’ll get it via RSS and read it when I’m free to.

    The only times I can see Tweets being interesting is when something cool is happening to the person sending them… they’re on vacation, at a cool conference about topics that their friends are into, etc.

    Mostly, I think this is more of a “oh all the cool kids are on Twitter while the masses are blogging… I wanna be cool, I’ll be on Twitter” that anything else.

  • http://www.marketersstudio.com David Berkowitz

    My problem isn’t so much that I stopped using it – I get bored of new tech toys easily enough. My issue is that everyone I added, many of whom I respect immensely and always welcome hearing from, post about absolutely nothing. They write these posts like “I’m going to the movies” or “No turkey left in the freezer” and it’s a complete waste of time. In other words, Twitter has turned some of the world’s greatest thinkers into mindless bores.

  • afa

    Twitter, just another one.

  • http://www.irelandseomarketing.com/ Gavin

    Sorry I am not interested in reading that someone has just popped to the loo for a #2,Ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration but I think you get the point.

    I don’t like the fact that these useless pages are being indexed by the Search Engines.

    Although……

    http://twitter.com/Hasselhoff

  • Kat

    Looks like it would be useful for stalking people. Other than that why not just txt msg your friends and ASK them what they are doing? Who cares about a whole herd of people you don’t know.

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