@RogerTheAlien: I would have to carry a journal around with me. I can use Twitter from my phone in the staff room at work, while I'm in line at Starbucks, at home on my computer, etc. There's no excuse not to record it. I also wouldn't say my attitude is devil-may-care, as I don't use my "regular" internet handle on Twitter and I haven't told any friends or family members about it.

Now if I can only stop those ads coming into my personal e-mail that want me to make the dick I don't have bigger . . .

Though I do find it strange that while our county's official website is a hard-to-navigate piece of garbage, their Twitter account is rather lush by comparison. . .

@JennQPublic: I like the past tense - twatted - and past perfect - to have twat, though. Which is the only reason I'd say I hope it stays around. Because I think Twitter is kind of douche-y anyway, it's funny to say, "Did you read what John twatted? No? Apparently he twatted about such-and-such. Speaking of which, have you twat in the recent past?"

@Jetgirly: Then why do you need Twitter at all? Can't you do that with a journal? Isn't the point of Twitter so that people CAN see what you wrote? If you don't care, then it's like you're missing the point of Twitter. But don't get me wrong; I applaude your devil-may-care attitude about it, it just seems that you're missing the point on Twitter's intended purpose.

@utensil42: Amen! I don't really need to know that so-and-so had the bestest ham sandwhich (spelling incorrect on purpose) with mayo and mustard ever LOL OMG! Plus, I find it kind of self-possessed to THINK people DO care. What's worse is when someone DOES care what their friends are up to all the time, it's kind of like this other thing we have that's illegal...what's it called? Oh yeah: stalking.

I'm pretty sure that there are uses of Twitter that I haven't discovered yet, and which may be of interest to me. I've heard it said that it works wonderfully as a discussion board, along the lines of IRC perhaps. But it's been very hard for me to get a foothold in it.

@D0rk: I agree on that. Some of the things I follow are bots that update new articles on sites, etc. I find it nice to just have one thing open and if I see a new article that interests me, I can go read it rather than visiting mutliptle sites to see what's going on.

@Eels: It depends. I'm 30 and I get Twitter. I use it to follow certain news sites that update their Twitter account with new articles. I also follow some local people I've found and people who comment or post links to causes I care about.

But...not as much as people who use the word "synergy".

Just because large groups of kids use Twitter to keep each other informed of every little detail of their day does not mean that Twitter is not useful for *other* things.

Don't feel bad though- most people didn't see what possible use the "world wide web" could have 15-20 years ago. Hopefully most of them have figured it out by now.

@hellinmyeyes: I Twitter what I eat and my workouts. I don't follow what anyone else writes and I don't care if people read what I write. I've found it a pretty good way to hold myself accountable.

Also, it lets my friend text me from her phone without requiring me to pay for each message and it lets me answer back using a real keyboard. Full of win!

I can think of more but I have to go to a meeting

@Eels: Hmmm, come to think of it, the only two people I know who use twitter are also attention whores.

There are other options out there as well for Twitter apps.

That said, I think one's satisfaction depends on how one uses any given site. For me, Twitter is primarily for marketing purposes and secondarily for fun, entertainment and communications. I've never posted what I had for lunch (why would I?) but I post links to my professional blog, to industry-related articles, to posts by my colleagues and to other things I find interesting, quirky or entertaining.

Since using Twitter, I've seen my ebook sales and web site traffic increase exponentially, had a significant increase in the number of media interviews (local and national) I've been asked to give, have been hired by more local clients and have been able to help people find referrals in their areas, especially as I now know my colleagues much better than when I only occasionally interacted on our industry chat list or at annual national conferences. It's all, to use the annoying parlance, "organic"--there's no need to hard sell or even feel like you're marketing. It's just part of your narrative.

(I've also learned about great books, music, movies, TV shows, blogs, web sites, services, products and opportunities, as they've been mentioned by people whose opinions I've come to respect. And @ComcastCares fixed a problem two minutes after I reported it, when the local office had ignored me for weeks.)

Twitter's advantage is that I can follow a small number of people (some strangers, some whom I know) and anyone who wants to follow me (a number ridiculously five times the number I follow) and hear what I have to say can do so. There's no forced mutuality as with Facebook, and why should there be? If one person is an expert and people want to hear what that expert has to say (@DavidPogue, for example), that's great. There's no reason to think he (necessarily) wants to hear about his followers' kids or car wash experiences or, in the ubiquitous example, what they had for breakfast.

Some people like Twitter because of thee open cocktail party atmosphere--the ability to IM with anyone and everyone-- and certainly some people post rubbish. But there's no reason to ever follow those people--you can very easily follow only those who post useful, interesting material. From a consumer perspective, I like that Twitter requires no personal information from me other than an email address; FB seems to want everything but your blood type, and you are left in the awkward position of having to either turn down the friending of people you didn't even like in high school (and who probably didn't like you!) or jump through hoops to filter out babblings you don't care to read. On Twitter, reciprocity is neither expected nor required.

I don't understand Twitter at all. I just can not grasp the concept. At all. I fear it is age, but I'm only 27. Larry King has a twitter, I hear.

Also, the constant mention of it. Every place I shop has a twitter, every band has a twitter. The six o'clock news has a twitter. Of all my friends, relatives, acquaintances, co workers, former classmates, bus drivers, mail carriers et al. I know one person who has a twitter. And she is an attention whore.

So I am confused by who is actually watching twitter, and what the point of it is.

@SteveZim1017: i liked facebook more when it was lateral connections (college students, young professionals). now you have to navigate the "do i reject my boss" pitfalls.

I'd say about half of my Twitter feed is similar accounts. I basically use it as a mobile RSS reader, and Twitter will become far less useful to me if they get rid of a lot of those accounts.

I feel completely lost in the cloud with Twitter. I have followers, but I only interact with a handful of them. I don't have anything groundbreaking to say, but I'd like to think I post something witty every so often and link to cool sites. I still don't understand the difference between hashtags and simply searching by keywords and I have never found anything I wanted to RT. That said, it sometimes feels like a waste of time but the effort is minimal. Perhaps if I made more of an effort to follow people who are into the same things I am into, it might be more rewarding.

I am, however, glad that the pornbots might be going away. 75% of my newer followers are internet skanks.

Facebook, on the other hand, is full of high school and college classmates I don't generally care to talk to but feel obligated to "friend." So my Facebook feed is full of status updates I really don't care to read. I know you can remove items from your feed but I find Twitter's method of all or nothing a lot more appealing.

I personally enjoy Twitter. I did not become a member until a little over a month ago and am very pleased. It is a way to instantly get feedback from other users and to also connect fans directly to the source (such as with a favorite athlete, sports writer or celebrity.) It's a way to filter the news that is important to you in one succinct feed rather than visiting numerous websites (finding national sports scores and local happenings within one spot).

LongURL Mobile Expander [addons.mozilla.org]

You just hover the cursor over the URL and it will show you the full URL, for the major short URL services. No more unpleasant surprises or unwanted advertising.

Twitter: -verb (used without object) 1. to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird.
2. to talk lightly and rapidly, esp. of trivial matters; chatter.

Twitter = Noise.

Shouldn't we all be striving for more signal and less noise?

@gStein: Do you do that with lists? I've never seen an option when posting to my wall to only let some friends see it instead of all friends. (I'm still relatively new to Facebook)

@youbastid: you would think, but facebook took a huge hit when they were banned from commenting on consumerist!

too soon?

* Female-sounding username
* Profile pic is of an attractive female, but tasteful. Usually just a headshot.
* Frequent tweets, seemingly innocuous, no blatant advertising
* All tweets end with a shortened URL
* shortened URL in user's tweets always leads to the same dating service

I'd love to see Facebook weed these out. It should be as simple as checking the shortened URLs. If they always lead to the same place, and they're present in the majority of the tweets, it's probably a spam account.

Twitter rejected a takeover bid by Facebook, so Zuckerberg is just going to write twitter into his own site and crush them that way