Anyone use twitter?

[Zetherin]

Originally Posted by Theaetetus

As I said, I think Twitter would be a useful tool if it allowed for word counts approaching 500 words. It would be a very effective blog site then, which could reach appropriate audiences. But as it stands, it really speaks to what is wrong with society--people in general do not have the necessary attention span to be constructive members of a democratic society. Rather than promoting constructive thought, it limits its potential immensely. Rather than worrying about what people are doing, we should be worrying about what people are thinking. And this cannot be done in the limitations of Twitter. I could careless what people are doing at this moment, but I do care what people are thinking. We need to start sharing our best thoughts with others, and things like Twitter limit that possibility that this would be an achievable goal.

I completely agree.

Justin, if you have a couple million, perhaps you can buy out Twitter and then rename philosophyforum.com to twitter.com!

Imagine tens of thousands of people the next day coming to share their instant mundane thoughts, only to find multiple sentences worth of critical thought transcending things like, "I'm hungry - I may just make myself a sandwich!" or, "Hey, guys, I think it's just about time to take a shower!". Oh, I'd love to see people's faces, "I have to type more than a sentence, and it can't always be about myself?! Screw that!".

Will we ever see a day when places like philsophyforum.com receive more recognition than sites like twitter? Unlikely, but we can dream, can't we?

[Theaetetus]

I know what you mean Z. I would love forums like this one to become more popular, but because many forums are trash, ours suffer from that stigma. We deserve far more attention than Twitter. Maybe our future connection with Facebook will help out with this.

[Didymos Thomas]

I'm pretty sure I heard this somewhere else, but...

Before you post anything on Twitter, remember one very important detail: no one cares what little you have to say in 124 characters.

And if they do care, they should embark on that most dangerous adventure and discover printed literature. I know, I know, it so hard, but if you manage the journey, you might save your very own life.

[FireWalkWithMe]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

I'm pretty sure I heard this somewhere else, but...

Before you post anything on Twitter, remember one very important detail: no one cares what little you have to say in 124 characters.

And if they do care, they should embark on that most dangerous adventure and discover printed literature. I know, I know, it so hard, but if you manage the journey, you might save your very own life.

Hahaha. So true!
Imaginary Twitter scenario:
USERNAME says... book? What is this "book" you speak of?

I fear the younger generations. I honestly do. (This coming from a 23 year old!)

[grasshopper]

I love Conan O'Brian when he gets all crazy about Twitter. You must watch it!

[FireWalkWithMe]

Originally Posted by grasshopper

I love Conan O'Brian when he gets all crazy about Twitter. You must watch it!

I'd like to see what you're talking about..?? He likes or hates it?

[grasshopper]

He is just making fun of it.

[FireWalkWithMe]

Is anyone on Tumblr.com ? I am on there..I had an account for a while and forgot about it, but today I started posting on there again.

I feel those who feel that Twitter is pretty useless, like Facebook minus the useful stuff, might find Tumblr more interesting. I guess it's a microblogging site but it isn't restrictive (no character count that I know of) and allows for all sorts of posts: text, links, audio, video, pictures, chats, etc.
It also a little more customizable than Twitter.

[Vasska]

Facebook is a social network that allows you to get in contact with current or old friends and might even make you some real life or online friends. It allows you to do 'stuff' online that apparently people find interesting.

Twitter on the other hand is a messaging platform to quickly get a message across to people who care. Twitter is useful to quickly post a status update, like last.fm did a few weeks back when their servers where down. Some artists update about their work on a new album. The list goes on.

Sure a lot of messages are quite useless to many people, and we on this forum don't care about Ye-Seul from South-Korea posting about what she ate today. But then; you don't have to follow her and can safely ignore her. And just follow any of the people, bands, corporations you are interested in.

The whole - Twitter is like FaceBook, but without any usefull stuff - is a failed argument for both are completely different services with different aims. It's like comparing this forum to any tech forum and saying it's not philosophizing enough.

Also on another note I find the whole 140 characters maximum quite interesting. It forces people to tell only the relevant, to condense a message to the minimum. Guess the quote below makes more sense:

The strategy is: always try to express you ideas in the simples possible model. The act of striping it down to this minimalist model will force you to get the essence of what you are trying to say (and will also make obvious to you those situations in which you actually have nothing to say).
~http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/howiwork.html

[grasshopper]

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien - Twitter Tracker (07/31/09) - Video - NBC.com

love it!