What, you don't Tweet? You don't update your friends, coworkers, family members, and random strangers on your every exciting move, even when you're actually just sitting around doing nothing. (Although, technically, you're posting on Twitter. That should count as something.)
I think the reasons for Twitter's continued success--what is keeping it from going the way of, say, Friendster--are fourfold.
1. You can do it from your phone. Since Twitter is basically just a big text page that isn't cluttered with photos and quizzes like Facebook, it's easy to read and post to on-the-go. I do most of my Tweeting (I will never be comfortable with that term) from my BlackBerry, which usually results in me nearly tripping over sidewalk grates and/or bumping into another pedestrian who is texting while listening to their iPod and walking a dog at the same time. When are those eggheads in Washington going to invent robotic arms for everyday use?
2. Someone can follow you, and you don't have to follow them back. It's not like Facebook or MySpace where by not accepting someone's friend request you are basically saying, uh, I don't want to be your friend.
3. Celebrities do it. The celebrity Tweeters, or "Twitterati" as they're called, are a big part of why Twitter became a thing that your aunt who religiously watches Good Morning America knows about. You aren't likely to be Tracy Morgan's Facebook friend, but on Twitter you can read his offer to induce labor for $15 and thrill to his stories of hanging out with Harry Bellafonte at Yankee Stadium. (Basically, he's exactly like the character he plays on 30 Rock.) Twitter is the only place where the musings of Shaquille O'Neal and '80s pop sensation Taylor Dayne can coexist in perfect harmony. It's like the vision of Hollywood I had in my head as a kid, when I thought all celebrities knew each other and hung out at cool parties where you'd see Mr. T partying with the dad from Diff'rent Strokes. (For the geeks out there, I highly recommend following Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and Hobo Darkseid, which is comic book writer Matt Fraction Tweeting as the hobo version of the biggest bad guy in the DC Comics universe. Hilarious, with some decidedly NSFW language.)
4. It's a great news source. With so many news outlets (CNN, Huffington Post) joining the fray, said outlets are now claiming that Twitter is changing the face of modern journalism. (Meanwhile, the trending topics are a good place to gauge what people are talking about, for better or worse.) I could make some big statement about how this is probably the future of news-- headlines from legitimate news sources melding into one uber-stream with entertainment gossip and your coworker's thoughts on raisin bagels--but for now I'll just say that it's nice to have news about health care reform and the latest Avatar trailer all in one convenient place.
Amazingly, I have gone this entire time without plugging either my (or Guyspeak's) highly informative and irreverent Twitter page. Such a thing would be unseemly. We all know no one uses their Twitter account for self-promotion.
(Fun fact: Twitter's working name was originally "Status." Thankfully, "What's your status?" never took off as a catchphrase.)
I think the reasons for Twitter's continued success--what is keeping it from going the way of, say, Friendster--are fourfold.
1. You can do it from your phone. Since Twitter is basically just a big text page that isn't cluttered with photos and quizzes like Facebook, it's easy to read and post to on-the-go. I do most of my Tweeting (I will never be comfortable with that term) from my BlackBerry, which usually results in me nearly tripping over sidewalk grates and/or bumping into another pedestrian who is texting while listening to their iPod and walking a dog at the same time. When are those eggheads in Washington going to invent robotic arms for everyday use?
2. Someone can follow you, and you don't have to follow them back. It's not like Facebook or MySpace where by not accepting someone's friend request you are basically saying, uh, I don't want to be your friend.
3. Celebrities do it. The celebrity Tweeters, or "Twitterati" as they're called, are a big part of why Twitter became a thing that your aunt who religiously watches Good Morning America knows about. You aren't likely to be Tracy Morgan's Facebook friend, but on Twitter you can read his offer to induce labor for $15 and thrill to his stories of hanging out with Harry Bellafonte at Yankee Stadium. (Basically, he's exactly like the character he plays on 30 Rock.) Twitter is the only place where the musings of Shaquille O'Neal and '80s pop sensation Taylor Dayne can coexist in perfect harmony. It's like the vision of Hollywood I had in my head as a kid, when I thought all celebrities knew each other and hung out at cool parties where you'd see Mr. T partying with the dad from Diff'rent Strokes. (For the geeks out there, I highly recommend following Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and Hobo Darkseid, which is comic book writer Matt Fraction Tweeting as the hobo version of the biggest bad guy in the DC Comics universe. Hilarious, with some decidedly NSFW language.)
4. It's a great news source. With so many news outlets (CNN, Huffington Post) joining the fray, said outlets are now claiming that Twitter is changing the face of modern journalism. (Meanwhile, the trending topics are a good place to gauge what people are talking about, for better or worse.) I could make some big statement about how this is probably the future of news-- headlines from legitimate news sources melding into one uber-stream with entertainment gossip and your coworker's thoughts on raisin bagels--but for now I'll just say that it's nice to have news about health care reform and the latest Avatar trailer all in one convenient place.
Amazingly, I have gone this entire time without plugging either my (or Guyspeak's) highly informative and irreverent Twitter page. Such a thing would be unseemly. We all know no one uses their Twitter account for self-promotion.
(Fun fact: Twitter's working name was originally "Status." Thankfully, "What's your status?" never took off as a catchphrase.)
As much as I hate Twitter, it's a necessary evil. It's kind of like the cell phone. At some point, everybody had one and if you didn't, you were the liability. Same with Twitter, since everybody is doing it, information flows through Twitter so if you're not on, you're almost totally out of the loop.
I wonder what folks would have said 50 years ago if we'd said that more people would get their news through 140 word character posts than newspapers in major cities. We'd be singled out and put in tenement camps, is my guess.
Oh what a technological web we weave.
Hmmm, from a guy who thinks twitter is retarded, I must admit you have a really good point with #1 assuming you aren't the type who despises texting or any other form of typing on microscopic or worse, microscopic on screen keyboards.
#2 sounds pretty stalkericious to me...
#3 Celebrities? Oh brother. I will never understand the obsession with celebrities, although, I will admit the idea of following Comic book authors, novel authors or even radio personalities does have a certain appeal, but many that can also be done with Facebook when these same people create their own fan pages. (Which is real hit and miss as of right now, FB aught to look into doing some verification so that people with fan pages can be verified as the actual person being fanned.)
#4 Made me groan. 140 word news updates? If you like reading just headlines in your newspaper, sure. But I'd rather hit up the newsites or blogs instead of getting hit with 1000 article "headlines" about things I don't care about to get the 1 interesting one.
The biggest problem with Twitter is if you follow more the say 3 people you get inundated with updates.