Twitter?
 

First off, I'm not sure if anyone else has posted anything on this subject, because I have not been here.

My question:

What is so great about this "Twitter" thing? I created one, to see what it does, and it doesn't do anything. Am I missing something here?

The power of twitter lies in amassing lots of followers and following people. It's like a news feed of random shit...everything from art, music, movies, "funny picture threads" etc, all wrapped into one continuous scroll of people that you loosely give a shit about (or don't...). But if you don't type anything and you don't follow anyone, no one will follow you and yes...if that occurs, it is indeed pointless.

For me, it's great for advertisement. I have already made a little $$$ just from using Twitter to promote my artwork. It ain't bad! Don't knock it till ya try it. If you have a Facebook account, think of it like Facebook's status updates, but instead of just your friends, it's a ton of random people that you don't know (yet). Nothing will happen if you don't dive in, though.

(Just don't be one of those people that says "I just took a shit", "it's monday, I'm tired", "I'm gonna go pick my kids up from school". Who cares, you mundane asshole?)

I have a myspace. It works the same as the status message. But even though, I have tried using Twitter a little since last night, it just isn't as appealing. You can't type much at once.

I'm going to try using it for a few more days. But so far, it isn't doing much for me.

You can't type that much because it's not meant to be walls of text. Remember, you have hundreds or thousands of people viewing your words (if they are following you), so the word limit is essentially there for "sporadic thought".

It's basically micro-blogging.

It probably won't appeal to you if you don't start following people (and thusly getting followed). It takes time, but I am following around 100 folks and about the same are following me. It's very entertaining to see what scrolls past at any given point of the day. It could be someone recommending a link to an online comic, maybe someone saying "have you seen this video?", or another horror fan talking about a new flick they watched. Whatever....

If Myspace and HDC are enough for you, then don't force it....no reason to if it doesn't appeal to you.

I took one look at the site, and said "fuck this".

It basically looked like broadcast texting to me. I don't give a damn about what people're doing every single minute of the day.

Just playing devil's advocate here...but you visit a message board, right? It's all the damn same, just different packaging. Just like on message boards, there are some retarded posts that you don't care about, but you just scroll past them. Some of them, however, are of interest so you click on them.

It's the exact same idea, just done with differently.

-D

...So if you go to twitter, expect more of the same?
I get the feeling even more assholes would intentionally target twitter too, so that doesn't exactly sell it for me, I get enough of all that here and the conversations generally have things of interest to me going on here anyways.

That's coming from me though, I said fuck it to myspace too...facebook is all I have and I barely even get on there.

I've never bothered with it... I use myspace for band stuff but that's the extent of my social networking apart from talking shit here.

I'm sure it's useful, I just never know what the hell to say.

See I'm with ya on this. I have a twitter account and I realized a few things:

1) I don't give a fuck about John Legend, why is it set up to automatically follow him and and bunch of other people I do not or will ever give two fucks about.

2) Waaaay too much information from too many people. I'm not going to care or have time to with all the microinfo from so many people.

I just use it to fuck around, I attempted to do a little trolling. I was amused that pornbots will become a follower of you.

I'm shitbag666satan on twitter

Twitter's stupid.

Twitter makes me popular among strangers. If I, a normal person with nothing special to say can gain approx 5 followers a day, then imagine what it can do for your band etc. Seriously, I talk about what I'm doing/eating etc and mention horror movies once in a while and got 6 new followers today.

What's the point of being popular among strangers though?

A band I like was giving away guestlist spots to every show on their tour to the first person responding to their messages on twitter so I signed up and followed them. The day of the St. Paul show, they decide to have their families from Texas join them and use up all their guestlist spots, thus no twitter contest for that date.

Somehow in the course of the week I was on twitter and checking the bands messages, 3 people started following me which I just find fucking weird because I never even posted a single message.

That was the extent of my experience on twitter.

Well they are strangers, but they are strangers with specific interests. I post about webdesign, tea and horror movies. So I got a lot of bloggers who talk about those things following me. That might not be important to everyone but the web design people are of specific importance because we ask eachother questions, and I get a lot of help and advice etc. Then people who read their blogs/follow their twitter follow me, opening up more opportunities for my future career. Knowing people in the business and networking is actually a big deal to me and I find twitter a perfect outlet for that.

At the same time as doing that, I also use it to keep me updated about things going on in my town. I follow a feed for local gigs, another that posts the highlights from my local paper. I follow to hear the top rated stories on digg. I follow a few entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose because they inspire me.

Other people who use twitter just to follow Ellen Degeneres or Oprah confuse me though. I don't care what Oprah eats for dinner.

i joined a few months ago to see what the deal was..

i made one entry - something like : 'i dont think i'll be using this - i dont see the point'


and i never went back.


honestly - i just dont get it.

I joined as well....and haven't been back. I don't get it either. And I really don't get why people follow these "celebrities" around. Who gives a fuck that Ashton Kutcher went to the market.

He went to the market? What did he get there??????? :confused: :rolleyes: ;)

Well, the shit like Ashton Kutcher is definitely lame, but I am following David Lynch, James Gunn, Lloyd Kaufman, and a few other people of interest. They have interesting things to say and I respect their works...why wouldn't I want to follow them? The problem with people that follow Ashton Kutcher is not the issue of following a "celebrity", the problem is the fact that they like Ashton Kutcher enough to follow him.

If I weren't following David Lynch, I probably wouldn't know about his "Interview Project" that he has going on, which is really interesting. Likewise, James Gunn does all kinds of "worst remakes ever", "favorite gore flick" type stuff that is fun to do.

Again, I ask...how is that any different than some of the games you guys play in this forum? It's all "time killer" shit at the end of the day. What you don't get about it doesn't make it lame, it just means you have other things of interest to kill your time.

There are, unfortunately, a lot of people that MAKE it lame....but it is what you make of it. Follow people you actually have interest in and I guarantee you will find it more interesting.

I'm a fan of twitter. I never really got into Myspace or Blogging because they take too much time. With twitter I don't feel like I have to commit to writing paragraphs since you only get 140 characters. I often put links to interesting or funny things to share with others and also to have a place to keep all those links for later. I don't follow many people, but people who have interesting things to say or interesting links. Really, the only famous people I follow so far is Dita Von Teese because I find her twitter interesting and glamorous, Ana Brett who is a Kundalini Yoga instructor, and Kevin Rose, a tea aficionado.

I feel old.... again. :(

I've no idea, I've never used it and I never will. Damn youngsters with your Myface and your Spacebook, Empee- threes and such nonsense. In my day we wrote messages on parchment with India ink and quill pens.

Now get off my lawn.

I'm glad that I (apparently) feel young because I use Twitter...and I'm 30 :p

you channeling neverending ?

Cant be.

NE's from the Stone Age...thats pretty ancient. :D

Oooh didn't know Dita Von Teese used twitter. My friend (and fave burlesque dancer) Virginia D'vine is on twitter but she only posts what days she has gigs. Looking up Dita atm.

Also do you follow Kevin Rose's tea stream. twitter.com/goodtea he posts a lot more tea related videos on there and also on facebook.

I did the same thing. It's so lame. I don't see the big deal either

Now there are a bunch of random people following me....Couple of porn bots I think.

Just signed up (THANKS, VC :p ).

My experiences:

• There are porn bots following me.
• Rainn Wilson is funny.
• I can't think of anything clever to say.

Also - I found this gaming live feed and I can't figure out how to post on it.

Gaming live feed? What is it?

Also, 1up.com is neat if your a gamer. :p

I am not sure if you actually post on the gaming live feed. It just pulls all the information from Twitter. Post something on twitter and say "blah, blah, blah, Sims 3, etc", and you'll probably see your post in a few seconds/minutes.

Well, if I ever have a problem with Twitter. Or want to know something about it, you'll be the first person I ask. :p

I made an account yesterday and I'm kinda digging it - follow me! Screen name- travistarbox

What have I done?....

says you don't exist. PM me a link or just follow me. www.twitter.com/jcostello5

@Chrono what is your username?

http://tweetmygaming.com/

I'll have to check out 1up.com :o

Yeah, that's what I figured, which I think is really weird - Interesting concept; pull on any mention of specific game names and mention them, but what's the point of monitoring the live feed? Don't you want to RESPOND to people? It's like talking into the void - throwing your voice into the pit of the well... So surreal.

Chronogrl. :D

Yeah, I enjoy Dita's a lot. I'll have to look up Virginia D'vine.

I also follow Kevin Rose's goodtea one (not his personal one), which I think I got from a link on your twitter one time. :p

My twitter is www.twitter.com/NoirButterfly, if anyone else wants to look me up.


@Chrono
I couldn't find you on twitter.

I think the purpose of that site is actually more for people that don't give a shit about Twitter, but do want to see what people are talking about with gaming. I think it's cool, but I agree...they should integrate Twitter into it (easy to do, there are a lot of 3rd party Twitter applications out there) so people can add to the stream while on the site.

especially with E3. People who were there in the audience for big announcements were the first to know, and they tweet with their camera phones and iphones so everyone following the feed can see what's going on before the news is published to websites.

And see...*THAT* is the "point" of Twitter.
If you follow enough people (or check out a site that takes Twitter feeds and compiles them instantly), you get that instant news effect. There are some Twitter feeds of people in Iran at the moment that were talking about the Iranian election days before CNN gave enough of a shit to start posting about it.

It has a lot of benefits...it just depends on how you choose to use it.

twitter was supposed to have downtime today but it was delayed cause people were tweeting about the Iran election and protests, but theres nothing about the protests on CNN, so they didnt want to seem like they were censoring or witholding live news.