Over the past couple weeks, it’s been impossible to avoid talk about Twitter, which is a new service whose sole purpose is to report what its users are doing. It’s like an away message for an IM client, only without the IM client. The snazzy thing is that you can update your status from the Twitter web site, as well as via IM, and SMS from your cell phone.
The only question is: why does anyone care? And apparently, no one does, despite all the hype surrounding Twitter. Supposedly, Twitter use is increasing exponentially, but after a quick query among my online friends (read: computer savvy friends), I’ve concluded that no one important Twitters anything. It all makes sense, after all, because the premise of Twitter is informing one’s friends as to what one is doing, and geeks, as we know, don’t have friends. And, if they did, they would just set their /away message in IRC, or set their public guild message in World of Warcraft.
I do think Twitter is neat, but knowing what everyone is doing all the time is kind of creepy, though could nonetheless be somewhat amusing depending on just how it’s used. I also acknowledge that there are some informative uses of Twitter, but in the end, it all comes down to having a network of people to use the service with, and without that network in place, the service is nothing more than a cute novelty.
For now, I’m calling shenanigans on Twitter becoming hugely popular. It seems more like everyone who’s touting how great it is, isn’t even using it themselves.
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