Twitter

For atleast a year, probably longer, friend Adrienne has been trying to convince me that I needed to join Twitter, that somehow plugging myself into yet another on-line social network was going to improve my life. With Myspace and Facebook though, it seemed rather unnecessary and I resisted it. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the trendiness of it contributed as well (like with everything Apple), but primarily it just didn't seem like something I needed. I've got enough on-line timesinks as it is.

It's come up occasionally since then, and I've continued to resist, that was until it came up during a Google Groups conversation in which Adrienne wrote;

I find it bizarre that so many of you guys are obsessed with thelatest innovations in
hardware and software, video and computer games,and mp3 players/peripherals/whatever, but think that social networkingtools are worthless.

Luke, obviously you DO care about what Mac's doing, and vice versa, orelse you wouldn't be writing on 412 at all! Explain to me how,functionally, this group is any
different than Twitter or Facebook,despite it being closed to a small network
of people (which you can dowith Twitter, FB, and anything else, you know). You post links andvideos here, so does everyone on FB and Twitter. You have discussionshere, same there. You tell people what you're up to here, same there.You make plans with your friends here, same there.

The only thing I can think of is that you're turned off by the trendy-factor of these sites, or that they're too time-consuming. Yet forall that stuff I listed in the first sentence, you're all about thelatest trend. And think about how much time you
waste on the Internet anyway.

BTW, this isn't aimed at Luke, just a rant in general.

So I decided fine, I'll sign up for it and use it for one month, and at the end of said month ponder if it had in fact had any sort of positive effect on my life, or rather it just added to the internet clutter already sufficiently packed full of Message Boards, Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, News, Op-Eds, Warhammer, Team Fortress 2, and everything else I spend time on-line reading or playing.


So yesterday I signed up. Handle is superfuzzbigmuf, so if you "tweet" as they say, then add me. If you don't, well then I will tell you in a month if its anything more than another pointless internet timesink.