Twitter squatting |
I just registered for Twitter which is the unamazingly pointless service that allows anybody to quickly post the most inane details of what they are up to daily. It’s the brainchild of Obvious Corp. founded by one of the former Pyra Labs folks, Evan Williams. Yeah, that guy who still seems to be struggling somewhat to prove he’s not a one hit wonder since Google bought Blogger from Pyra Labs. Remember the rather odious Odeo? Yeah, that’s a Williams gig too that he has since bought back from the VCs. Keep swinging Ev, some people still fondly remember Aldo Nova’s first album.
Twitter is pretty simple compared to Odeo. It’s just linkblogging size posts containing primarily the mundane details of people’s daily existence. Think, type, publish to the world or your friends. If only most people would think more carefully about the “to the world” part.
I did get a chuckle for all of five seconds reading other people’s Twitters like: “wow i’m going to move”, “ddddddd”, a few people using tinyURL to mask links and foreign language Twitters. You can see it all on the Twitter public timeline. A river of almost exclusively noise, extremely low signal, which Eric Rice reminded me about:
If you took all the river-of-cheese-sandwiching that is on the front page of Twitter, it’s pretty retarded. The noise of the masses is just that: noise– even though it might be highly relevant to each individual’s audience of two or three personal personal networks.
Exactly. I can maybe see telling your closest friends and family where you are at and what’s up, but even most of them could care less that you just ate a ham sandwich. The first time I looked at Twitter I thought it would never go anywhere and yet it lingers.
Why am I registering for something I think is stupid? Because and to quote my first and likely last ever Twitter message: “Just signed up so some idiot with the same name wouldn’t tell the world about their inane daily happenings.”
Twitter squatting alert.
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You know what’s funny about cheese sandwiches actually? There is an amazing restaurant in Morgan Hill called Ragoots, and they have the most in-frigging-credible grilled cheese sandwich I have ever had in my entire life. And. I can’t post about it.
Funny, really. Cuz I don’t want to be ‘that guy’.
Comment by Eric Rice — February 19, 2007 @ 1:25 pm PST
It’s one thing to recommend a great place to each cheese sandwiches, that’s good signal, versus telling someone you just ate one. They should make the default not “to the world” and that would probably cut down some of the nonsense, but would also cut down a lot of the flow which is why they probably leave it the way it is. There are a bunch of people that sign up for things and never change the default settings.
Comment by TDavid — February 19, 2007 @ 1:34 pm PST
I actually like the fact that it is trivial stuff broadcast to the world. I see nothing wrong with it. If you don’t like it, then don’t read it. I don’t see it filling up search engine results with noise, for example, so I don’t see how it hurts anyone… just like personal blogs.
Comment by nick botulism — February 27, 2007 @ 6:07 am PST
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Well, you got me to sign up for it … it’s definitely one of those pages where you can spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing. I think if you get all of your friends to sign up for it, it could be fun, like a facebook or myspace account. But at the end of the day I’d prefer a facebook account. My one and only twitter update : “Wasting 5 minutes of my life on Twitter that I will probably wish I had back at some point.”
PS Props on the limecat picture in your above screencap
Comment by Kevin — December 14, 2007 @ 11:59 am PST
Kevin - I’ve had a resurgence of interest in Twitter since writing this post and am no longer a twitter squatter, see (linked as related post above too):
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20071015/4864/
And then I talk about how to better manage the flow here:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20071128/4975/
It’s been like 60 days since I began studying and experimenting with it much greater depth. Probably adding a #of days counter to the homepage.
Comment by TDavid — December 14, 2007 @ 12:07 pm PST
Hmmmm… feeling stupid about this call yet? Twitter has just broken through some critical mass barrier. Just look at all the PR and social media geeks using it. Scoble, Arrington, Kawasaki are all posting constantly. Better get moving.
Good call on the Twitter squatting though. I think you get credit for coining the phrase!
-Stiennon
Comment by stiennon — October 29, 2008 @ 11:01 am PST
[…] think we already too late to talk about Twitter squatting. This issue had been brought to our attention as early as last year. Even at Social Browse, we have this guy […]
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Users don’t insert the tinyURL to mask…it’s an automated feature built in to twitter. And for the love of god Stiennon, why is Arrington picking fights on twitter?
Comment by gCommerce — October 30, 2008 @ 3:17 am PST