Just joined fairly recently myself. http://twitter.com/aidan_walsh

Using Twitterific myself, found Twhirl to be kinda buggy on the Mac. That said, I'm not entirely convinced by Twitterific either, so thinking I might give writing my own client a go as an exercise in Objective C.

Well, I just joined. http://twitter.com/JoelBennett.

Am I the only one who finds all these social networking sites incredibly boring, annoying, and frankly, just plain dumb ? Especially Twitter (and clones). I just can't imagine a single situation where "micro blogging" would classify as anything else than an annoying pain in the ass...

Then again, looking at the global success of these services, it might just be me. Bah.

Quote:Original post by Yann L
Am I the only one who finds all these social networking sites incredibly boring, annoying, and frankly, just plain dumb ? Especially Twitter (and clones). I just can't imagine a single situation where "micro blogging" would classify as anything else than an annoying pain in the ass...

I used to think the same. I started to use Twitter mainly as an experiment out of boredom.

For the most part, it depends on what/who you follow. The value you get out of it depends on what you are looking for in it. I don't use Facebook or MySpace or Bebo because they don't look like they have any value to me. Twitter is gaining value all the time.

A lot of people only follow people they know, others like to follow as many people as possible. I think I'm getting to be the latter, though it would have to be people who share similar interests. Sometimes its handy to have to vent, other times it can be handy to see peoples reactions to things and stories as they break. Sometimes you can see the formative thoughts of articles you see a few hours or days later popping up, other times its just trash Valleywag crap.

Some publications like Ars Technica use Twitter as an alternative to their RSS feeds. Some sites have come up using Twitter as a framework, bringing additional functionality to the service. Sites like Quotably which allow you to track Twitter conversations, or the search engine Tweetscan.

Twitter has proven itself to be relevant at times. The biggest example that sticks out in my mind was the storm that surrounded the California fires last summer, and how people and services started to use Twitter to follow and even mould the story. The LAFD still use the account they set up then to issue safety alerts to this day.

Quote:Original post by Yann L
Am I the only one who finds all these social networking sites incredibly boring, annoying, and frankly, just plain dumb ? Especially Twitter (and clones). I just can't imagine a single situation where "micro blogging" would classify as anything else than an annoying pain in the ass...

Then again, looking at the global success of these services, it might just be me. Bah.

I thought I would feel the same way. I was incredibly resistant about the concept when my friend tried day-after-day for weeks to get me to sign up. I thought the whole concept was completely silly when it was described to me and even when my friend showed me a few blog posts about Twitter which tried to explain its appeal. I still thought it was ridiculous even after I first signed up. Now I'm trying to get all of my contacts/friends to join so I can fill my network with people that I think I would enjoy reading updates from.

When Ravuya had me add him was when I saw the potential in it. If a bunch of developers and programmers started using it then the only things I'd read about from other people would be things I'm interested about reading. I have absolutely no interest in adding someone if 50-75% of what they discuss is some aspect of their life that I don't care about. That said, if someone primarily talks about development, pastes cool links, or shares intelligent ideas/thoughts, then I enjoy "following" them. When a majority of someone's post become about them brushing their teeth, turning on a television, or finding rashes in weird places, I'll stop following them.

So far, for interest, I have awesome stuff on my list from benryves, Ravuya, lightbringer, Gaiiden, Moe, and Mona Ibrahim (fellow GameDev.net'er, even though she didn't post here). These people have primarily interesting things to say and I enjoy reading their contributions. A majority of my posts today have been about games, industry news, stuff I found out while writing tomorrow's news post, and my current experiments with TorqueX.

Part of this is that I enjoy active/current mediums which require very little effort to contribute to. I love IRC, Instant Messengers, and forums where I don't feel bad about only writing a line or two (or more, if the situation fits) entries/posts.

Quote:Original post by aidan_walsh
Twitter has proven itself to be relevant at times. The biggest example that sticks out in my mind was the storm that surrounded the California fires last summer, and how people and services started to use Twitter to follow and even mould the story. The LAFD still use the account they set up then to issue safety alerts to this day.

That's something different. Used as an emergency alert dispatch, the system is certainly a good idea. I can also see the use for things like stock quote tickers, targeted news, etc. But I don't get the concept of "micro blogs". It just reminds me some of these pre-teens who spend the entire day sending dozens of SMS to their friends about every single little irrelevant thing that just happens to cross their minds. While Twitters technology is interesting, it looks like being an attention whoring tool more than anything else. Then again, I feel the same about social networking systems and blogs in general.

Quote:
Part of this is that I enjoy active/current mediums which require very little effort to contribute to. I love IRC, Instant Messengers, and forums where I don't feel bad about only writing a line or two (or more, if the situation fits) entries/posts.

I deeply despise realtime and/or short message chatting systems, from IM to SMS. I especially consider the latter to be a direct spawn of satan (and a genius marketing coup from the telco companies, making tons of money from what was essentially a transmission control / telemetry channel). Instant messaging is really bad too. I don't know how my GF can live with her PC constantly popping up some IM window of "so-and-so connected and/or wants to talk to you", and yadda yadda. I would consider this an unsollicited invasion of my private "zen-zone" ;)

That's probably why I don't fit into Twitters target profile :)

Quote:Original post by Yann L
...yadda yadda. I would consider this an unsollicited invasion of my private "zen-zone" ;)

That's probably why I don't fit into Twitters target profile :)

So that explains how you manage to get so much work done! I knew there had to be some trick to your amazing productivity... [grin]