Yes, you get out when the punters start buying in, in droves.
When the scam artists and product pimps join the party in massive numbers.
When self appointed social media evangelists get shrill with their ‘I told you so’s’ – endlessly quibbling over lists about who’s in and who’s out.
When the celebutards join the fray and the grasping desperate famewhores who follow them won’t stop vying for their fickle shallow attentions.
And yes, it’s absolutely time to get out when the MSM, on it’s last legs, looking for credibility and eyeballs, now attempts to save itself by not going a day without mentioning their new found shiny thing.
No, you can’t follow me, I’m not there anymore.
Oh, I had lightly buttered toast and jam with a coffee for breakfast. You?
Image via realdanlyons.
That cartoon is GOLD Phil.
Its funny, facebook has really getting up my ring lately. Im still a junky – just a self-hating one.
Example: I noted on my updates recently that I had been admitted to the legal profession (after years of psot-graduation pissfarting on that question). Next day I see ads for “100k+ law jobs” on my page. Never saw them there before.
Hey FB – f*ck you.
And ….see you later for scrabble.
That picture made me laugh. But you would already know that if you were following me on Twitter.
That picture is indeed ftw.
I can’t help but think you’re doing it wrong.
The beauty of twitter is that it’s pretty hard for random people to annoy you without your permission. If you’re following someone who is boring, or posts too often, or is a tosser, simply stop following them. How hard is that?
I thought it might be a nice spot for really short personal blogging, the kind of stuff that’s too mushy and pointless for the proper blog, but I’m already starting to wonder.
I took darebin dad as a name in part to see if it worked better than other social networking for the specific tasks of meeting other parents, including dads, in my broad area. However I’m not sure it does this at all.
I suspect in fact it is most suitable for people with a blackberry, who carry said blackberry all the time, and therefore even in work meetings etc can be downloading their silliness.
Yes, you get out when the punters start buying in, in droves.
And yet, here you are, blogging.
I gave up on MySpace because I could never log on.
I don’t mind Facebook. Got into contact with a long-lost mate in the Us through it, and occasionally I get messages from places other than LP.(Even got a few friends who are LP-ers.) Mostly I use it for posting books I’ve read or doing literary quizzes.
But, wtf is Twitter and have I spelt occasionally right?
@dr faustus, if you had been following me on Twitter you would have known that I was kicking around there for a while, I think it’s safe to say I know how to “do it”. I was aware of Twitter pretty well the day it launched when it was still a part of Odeo, which I sometimes used for podcasting. I loved what it was, I loved what it could be, I hate what it has become. So I left.
@barry Indeed! Because blogging is new media blue chip not penny stock in a biotech startup promising to build you your own personal chimera. Blogging is a decade + old, I’ll see you back here in seven years for a discussion on Twitter’s staying power. Or not.
I am soooooo far ahead of you. I was like, over Twitter before anybody else, like, even thought it was kewl. Srsly.
Actually, I just could never see the point of Twitter. I just don’t get it. On that bright shiny morning, I felt the yawning chasm of the generation gap open up before me.
I think it works like this:
Twit.
Twitter.
Twittest.
Which one are you?
At the risk of sounding like a character in a novel I’ve just been reading, who is ‘the sort of person who attached moral value to his preferences’ (ouch! triple ouch!), I couldn’t really get the point of Twitter either. It’s always looked to me like the social networking equivalent of busloads of tourists who never do anything but take photos — the representation of experience taking the place of actually having and savouring the experience.
Two maltesers. Which I made up for by having steak and beer for lunch. Well you did ask.
As for that other thing, I stayed away, and never felt a loss for doing so.
If you go on WeRead on Facebook, you can simultaneously list all the books you’ve read on Twitter. (: I think. I also think its a new feature. So, what, if any, is the connewction between Facebook and Twitter?
Phil,
seem to remember you a year or so ago announcing at LP you had quit blogging in favour of Twitter. Now that tweeting has jumped the shark, what’s the new flavour of the month for early adapters?
I use Twitter through work, it’s very useful for me.
I work in communications and journalists use twitter very heavily (including your mate Simon Sharwood, Phil).
It gives us both the opportunity to see what the other is working on/thinking about. Sure, 80% it what we had for breakfast, but occasionally it will be “why can’t I find any case studies on XXX”, to which I can reply, “why we have one, let me email you”. Hasta la lasagna, story in BRW.
Also, it helps maintain relationships.
I dunno, this whole “I’m quitting X for eva!!! stuff is a bit highschool/geocities for me (just showed my age).
It’s a tool – make of it what you will. No one’s gonna have a tweet funeral for you, and if you want to use anything social that doesn’t have dickheads, shysters, businesses, young people, show offs, shy people, etc. I know a great cave on a mountain with a million bats in it that are real social. Something for dealing with humans, not so much I fear.
@Derek yep, I dive into things a give ‘em a red hot go, but I never left blogging….though I did pronounce it dead. Predictions are a bitch huh?
The flavour of the month that you never knew you needed? In 12 months it’ll probably be all about micro video blogging and geo location. But I think that’s jumped the shark already, It’s so 2008.
Maybe it’ll be meeting people in real life for a yarn.
Here goes.
Phil, can I call you a Twitter quitter?
Are you a bitter Twitter quitter?
Will Twitter batter-patter make you feel better or fitter?
@PatrickG all true. As a work related tool it can have value, but for me as a personal tool it has reached it’s use by date.
I just took a month off my personal feed and realised I just didn’t care for it as a personal conversation any longer.
Anyway, I enjoyed being a social media curmudgeon for at least one post. Back to early adopting the latest shiny new thing.
@Liam, we’ve known each other long enuff for you to know you can call me anything.
But where else can you find out about Andrew Bolt’s obsession with Jill Singer’s ovaries?
Facebook, Twitter, who cares?
Neither of them make money, or are capable of making significant amounts of it.
They will be backwaters in a few years.
I just joined because I heard about a Twitter page on the fires ( I live in central Vic) It does seem a little weird inside I must admit*…but then it could be useful as a blog back-up as my posts now resemble twits as much as anything these days.
Also there could be another Black Saturday.
* Hi anamariecox!
I could never figure out what was so exciting about something that celebrated very very very very very very short attention spa
C’mon Liam, don’t be a twatter.
*titter*
This is why I stick to using it for parent stuff, it’s all about pitter patter twitter.
PaulW – facebook have a huge amount of data on people now. There’s got to be something profitable in there for them.
Twitter may disappear but I think microblogging is here to stay. Interesting to see that the ABC have started using it – both as a way for listeners to provide live feedback to radio programs and to rebroadcast emergency messages that appear on their website.
its the Twenty20 of blogging.
Honestly though, what cost more time, reading those meal-twitters, or writing this rather sanctimonious … thingy? (Or commenting on it.) Listing your meals is Twitter’s “fit for purpose” sweet spot really. That and linking with the obligatory tinyurls, for which it works better than the morning blogathon linkfest.
I like twitter because now my son is 2 I never get more than 10 minutes or so at a stretch at the computer until he and his brother are asleep and I’m worn out. Without twitter, my morning would not have featured this soothing joy (via @coconutlime) which I offer to you all.
Also, I am a food blogger and broadcast my meals all the time. If you ate like I do, you would too.
Throughout my time on the internet nothing has been so constant as the public declaration that community x just isn’t as cool/useful/fun anymore since it got popular, I’m leaving, look at me, watch me leaving, pay attention to me as I leave.
I guess 140 chars is too restrictive for a proper job of it so…
This post reminds me of all the people who complain over at Orwell Prize about the cataloging of eggs. It’s not Orwell’s diaries I don’t want to read.
Also Stephen Fry is on Twitter http://twitter.com/stephenfry Reason and value alone.
In the book Groundswell they say that Twitter will last (though I don’t think they’re entirely sure what it will do) because it does something that no other channel of communication yet does. Personally I’m loving it even though I don’t know why… And I was disturbed to have Andrew Landeryou and Malcolm Turnbull “follow” me without me even following them first…
For the laconic, Twitter would work fine. The flow provides the context. But what you had for breakfat, lunch or tea – unless something special just more wall paper to watch.
I’ve been on Twitter for two years, and learned very quickly to just follow and listen. From the early days, Twitter has been recognised as a microblog for useful updates, and only people with something valuable to put down should be ‘posting’. Thus slow learner Turnbull Malcolm has learned not to waste our time telling us that he, Lucy, the kids and one of the kids’ friends are all sitting down to lunch at home.
The ‘I’m getting out because it’s become known to the great unwashed’ approach is risible and puerile. As for “what I had for breakfast posts” – they’re more troublesome on blogs than twitter. And many of the blogs circulated and given a good rap by this site are full of the sorts of blindingly boring domestic minutiae about one’s own kids that was, once upon a time, limited to a couple of SMH journalists and Richard Adie.
It will be a great shame if Twitter is regarded as “like, so last week” when it’s actually invaluable.
‘Boring’ is not a demonstrable intrinsic quality of anything. It’s not that it is boring, it’s that you are bored. Bored blind, in fact, as you say yourself.
I like reading about people’s kids. And when men write about their kids, I regard it as a sign of hope for the world.
PC — hear, hear.
Oh, and btw… what’s Twitter?
I was in Adelaide last week for a conference. The key note speaker was Genevieve Bell, who’s an Adelaide Thinker in Residence. Weird title, but not a bad idea. Anyhoo, she’s an anthropologist who works for Intel talking to punters about how they use technology for communication.
I liked her beccause she wasn’t a techno-evangelist. One of her main messages is that the future will look a lot like the present because technology changes quickly, but culture doesn’t. One of her main riffs seems to be that there’s now growth in people turning off their technology. A charming example of this is a Nokia mobile phone marketed in Saudi Arabia which automatically disables itself for 20 minutes after the beginning of Moslem prayer time. It also tells you what direction Mecca is from anywhere in the world and contains the complete Koran. Nifty, eh?
Fine, I heard her speak late last year, when she’d just taken up the appointment — I thought she was terrific. Part of her agenda seemed to be to quietly dispel technophobia. The Thinkers in Residence program has been running for a few years now and has been great. Susan Greenfield in particular was an electrifying presence to have in the city.
I’m encouraged by the thread – it reinforces my reluctance even to investigate Twitter. And my decision to suspend my Facebook two days after joining is looking sounder every day.
By the way, that photo-funny at the top of the post is hilarious.
There’s something kind of reassuring about the notion that human beings will invent amazing technology and then use it for homely, harmless, vaguely silly purposes like yakking about breakfast. It’s what separates us from the robots… at least for now.
Here’s an Irish filmmaker using Twitter to make a feature film. Any Twitteronado want to join him?
http://www.frankkelly.blogspot.com
I agree with Phil – Twitter ain’t what it was. Most of my new followers are PR people trying to somehow improve their ability to work with me by reading my stream of consciousness. Many others are spammers. The followers I enjoyed conversing with are being drowned out by these hucksters and opportunists. I’m not ready to leave, though. But Twitter sure is getting polluted and many new nodes in my network reduce the value of the network at the moment. That’s NOT how it oughtta be.
I don’t really understand all the fuss. You can follow who you like and block who you don’t like. You can just watch the twitter stream or completely ignore it. You can interact as you like. Nobody will notice if you don’t tweet for weeks (well some may notice). Who cares who is reading your tweets. It is all one way and does not get in the way of your life. Spammers and hucksters on twitter are easily dealt with. Delete Delete Ignore Ignore