Originally Posted by
Crowe Diddly
I think its by far the most useful and customizable of all the social media sites. It is currently the only one I use with any regularity. There are so many interesting people and things on there, I'm curious what you mean by "its a joke." People always talk about the silliness of "I don't care what so and so had for lunch", or those types of complaints, because you only see those things if you active selected to see them. Don't follow boring or misinformed idiots, and don't blame the medium for some of the idiot messages on it. Twitter is a rather incredible communication platform, and the next logical development of IM systems in general.
Twitter is the greatest message board of all time.
I'm not talking about the stupid "eating Sushi @xxxx" messages; what I mean is that the whole premise is being manipulated by the the top-level users. Tweets are bought and sold; followers (the dick-measuring aspect of Twitter) are bought and sold. To me it looks like Digg where "Super-Users" (pardon the choice of words) basically control who is important and what content gets out.
Basically Twitter tells you, your "worth" is based on the number of followers you have; sure some people use it to be entertaining, but even then the hidden motive is to monetize themselves or their Twitter feed, or to shill their projects. And all the while this "worth" is being manipulated just like the Digg "you pat my back I'll pat yours" from 4 years ago
Finally, the idea of corresponding in 140 characters... I'll leave that for a separate debate