Are you on Twitter?

[Eric33]

oohhh we touched a nerve lol.. It's ok Wayne, you like what you like.

I like the old school forums where everyone is together in a huge talk city and having fun. We can ALL see what they are doing and make comments. Seems more lively and fun like that.

Twitter, Myspace, Facebook... Bleh.

[Wayne Luke]

No nerve, just stating the facts of my account. Personally, I don't care if you use Twitter or not. Its your call.

[dkon26]

I made a twitter account and used it for about 4 seconds. Personally, I think its pretty lame but useful for some I guess.

[Eric33]

Well supposedly I am tweeting with Natalie Portman lol, but I really have my doubts. 2,000 followers?... Britney..has 542,000 followers.....hmmmm.

[Joe Gronlund]

Hey, Floris.... I am on that site now and it looks to be a site that has "ONLY" confirmed actual celebrity users?.. I searched for Natalie Poertman and she isn't there.

Probably because that is not how you spell her name..

[Eric33]

Nah.. I spelled it wrong there.. I know it's Portman.

Twitter is "to busy ATM" and I can't log in!. They better get that thing on bigger servers soon if they don't want to drop off the web.

I'm still trying to see the point of Twitter.. I need a few more days to see if I'll keep it. Maybe I'll find a good use of it, but if not.. It's gone.

[dkon26]

I'll play along. Add me if you wish. Lets see if anyone actually does.

http://twitter.com/dkon26

[Eric33]

lmao!.. I had two followers, but I deleted them(sorry if it was someone on here) I don't like Twitter.. It doesn't do it for me lol so I'll stick with the old school forums..

Even Facebook lasted longer with me than Twitter. Perhaps if I had friends in other parts of the country I would keep a facebook or twitter to keep in touch, but I don't, so I really have no need for them.

Besides.. it would be nice to hear voices once in a while besides text. Sometimes we all need to pick up the old tele and give a shout

[Floris]

Twitter is getting funding.
Twitter is growing by 1200%
Twitter is dealing with constant growth problems

They're consequences of growing with a success.

They're monetizing the web site and growing funding to deal with it.
Saying they're sitting on their a* doing nothing, enjoying money .. is a poor assumption and obviously not their business model.

It's because of the celebs that are invited or paid to join, or who pay to join and get listed properly, etc .. that they grow so big. It helps move it mainstream. Twitter in 2009 isn't for just social network geeks anymore. The leo laports and kevin roses are being pushed out of the top10 lists by Ellen and Snoop and Obama and others.

Don't assume please that this is running on a shared hosting solution with 2 people on staff, enjoying their 250million in funding waiting to get acquired by Google Inc.

[Eric33]

Don't assume please that this is running on a shared hosting solution with 2 people on staff, enjoying their 250million in funding waiting to get acquired by Google Inc.

Oh but they can afford more staff now and I am sure not to many are running the site ATM. That is quickly changing(obviously) because it seems to me a ton of celebs are being PAYED to announce they are on Twitter. I hear it ALL THE TIME from Ellen DeGeneres, P-Diddy ect ect that they are on Twitter, even giving their user names out on public TV.

It's just a big pay off gig to get twitter popular and all the celebs will reap a little benefit from it. No doubt that yahoo, Google, or other over wealthy net gurus will try and buy Twitter, I almost count on it.
The site isn't anything new IMO and pretty basic.. If you have myspace or facebook(a rip off of myspace) why Twitter?.
Nah.. I will not support it.. just another tool for some young punks trying to make mills off of poor, internet addicted people.

[Wayne Luke]

just another tool for some young punks trying to make mills off of poor, internet addicted people.

So why are you on this site? Its a software support site for people to build forums. Most of thost people are trying to make money off of "poor, internet addicted people."*

So do you believe everything on the internet needs to be free and are just trolling this site? Or are you a hypocrit and just sour because your cool idea didn't get you $250 million in venture capital.

*not my term just quoted.

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In case you really can't see the difference between Facebook, Live Journal, MySpace (a ripoff of Live Journal) plus all the other blogging providers and Twitter, here it is.

Twitter is actually built around the Simple Messaging Protocol. This is why there is a 140 character limit. The web interface is incidental and optional. I actually only visit twitter.com very rarely. Maybe once a week. I have a client on my desktop that allows me to receive all the messages from people that I follow. I have an application on my Blackberry that allows me to receive all the messages from people that I follow. However I don't even need the Blackberry application, I can just SMS into my account if I wanted to.

Its more akin to Instant Messaging than a blog. The only thing you can really do on the website is to find new interesting people to follow. Obviously, its not for everyone. MySpace isn't for everyone. Competition in the market is good. If you don't use it and don't see a need for it then so be it. Trolling about it is just sour grapes.

[SeeLand]

I don't use twitter, I don't like

[Gladius]

Funnily enough, there are more "I ate such and such for breakfast" in this thread than I usually get in a week of tweets on Twitter. Most of what I get are new articles and announcements from websites and businesses that I follow. I guess if you wanted to then you could make your twitter account inane but you can also make it something worthwhile. My twitter is like have 50 research assistants finding information for me.

In all honesty, do you get anything worthwhile off Twitter that you couldn't by signing up for the sites' mailing lists? If so, can you list some concrete examples? I'm truly curious, because with the avalanche of social networks of all shapes and sizes that's started in the last few years, I just can't see how any website or business could keep up with updating them all and not simply repost the same information on all of them, just so that they can put up a "WE'RE ON <INSERT NEW SN OF THE MONTH>!!! FOLLOW US HERE!" sign.

[Wayne Luke]

Actually I do get worthwhile stuff off of Twitter. There are three groups of people that I follow... 1) People who contribute to vBulletin or run successful vBulletin sites. 2) Web Development sites or successful consultants. 3) Environmental Advocates and Organizations. I've even provided very basic vBulletin support through Twitter as long as I know the person is an actual customer.

I don't really like to sign up for mailing lists. I used to and they are just too cumbersome. I think I am on a dozen website mailing lists now and I never really read them. Once I week I glance over them and mark them as read without every visiting the website. I don't need to as I got everything in the news letter. RSS is the same way because I have to consciously read the RSS Feed and then have no real incentive to visit the website. I am sure email and RSS works for a lot of people and that is great for them.

So two of the tweets that I see right when I get up this morning are these:
@sitepointdotcom: MySQL: the Pros and Cons of MyISAM Tables (URL)
@mashable: Reading: "10 Ways to Build Your Blog Community with Twitter" (URL)

I would be interested in reading both of those articles so I click on the links and tabs open in my browser to read when I have time today. That is just two of them. I haven't looked at the rest. So both of these sites earned a click from me today. If they have CPM ads they earn a few pennies off me. If they have CPC ads and I find one interesting, I might click on it. Or take Sitepoint as a specific example, I might buy their newest book. I get deals from Borders Books and Barnes & Noble that aren't found anywhere else. I get notified from my hosting provider about issues on the servers in realtime. I find interesting recipes to try on friends and family.

I am not on a ton of social networks. I am on Facebook and Twitter. That is it. Well I have a MySpace page but I don't actively use it and see no need to post anything there. I do have Twitter set up so that anything I post on it gets forwarded to Facebook but that is it. There are people that post things to all of the major sites. There are even sites like ping.fm that allow you to post to every social network you're on at once. Each network has different users though and can power traffic to your website.

So I do find a lot that is interesting and worthwhile on Twitter.

[Gladius]

Good answer, thanks. Please share a few interesting Twitter feeds if you can - I'm sure they'd be of interest to many of us as well.