Or not. Man I've been using twitter. I feel terrible for saying that. I've been using it as a consumer. I don't use it for social networking. It's really addictive.
How I use it, or why it's so appealing:
It's like an RSS feed that aggregates small instant updates. Because I don't want long detailed content. When I'm procrastinating online, I want to see short headlines I'm interested in. See Reddit, Metafilter and Slashdot rely on people to find and filter through series of interesting links. The other 90% is the community, where discussions make the internet less lonely. It's reminiscent of the old bulletin boards / message boards where quality content was posted daily. The downside is that discussions take up a day's worth of reading, reacting, researching, writing, and waiting for a response.
Twitter runs the other way. It's short. Mobile. Accessible. I can procrastinate with peace.
The rudimentary design draws in interesting people. Markets otherwise unknown (sports, arts, papers, celebrities) have hopped on the twitter bandwagon. People who would have otherwise avoided the internet all together. It's very easy to use as website. This isn't like facebook where there's so much clutter, people lose focus on the intent.
The selling point is it's recommendation system. It's addicting. Better than anything I've used. Better than the community, better than google. It's like as if Del.icio.us was talking to me. It's better at replacing Yahoo's portal websites (static aggregator) and HuffingtonPost / PopURLS (aggregates everything). If I want to find a sub-community, a niche, I don't have to wait until it's posted in a blip from a community website. I go to twitter's recommendations. Lists of stuff I'm interested in. If a new site wants to find an audience, they've already adapted to twitter. The infrastructure has been setup. I want a new community, twitter has hoards of websites ready for a new audience. The match has been made.
It's decentralized. There is no common front page. The user customizes his front page. Adding sources, removing sources are easy. Finding really interesting sources is easy (actual band/celebrities twitter, the magazines's twitter). People don't upvote/downvote stories Nothing can be gamed. No shitty youtube comments. Get the stuff straight from the source (columist/band member), that you like. If people don't like the source, remove it entirely, and it disappears from the "front page". There is no development of a community, just a focus on new content & giving respect to the source.
In short, it's like a personalized RSS feed that updates every minute, that is connected to the real people. Easy to find or ignore micro-communities that spring up. Decentralized nature fosters "genuine" interests that can't be gamed. Unike Digg.
I've found my replacement for the NYTimes. Damn you paywall. $15 a month?!?!? I'll go $10 a month, $100 a year. Deal.
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