I think almost everyone I know Twitters, and I just don't get it. For those of you who don't know, again I went to Wikipedia to share with you...
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained extensive notability and popularity worldwide. Estimates of the number of daily users vary, because the company does not release the number of active accounts. In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that Twitter had 4-5 million users. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace), which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million, however only 40% of users are retained. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1382%, Zimbio had a growth of 240%, followed by Facebook with a growth of 228%
For starters, I just don't get texting. I did begin texting, only when someone else texts me, after getting my BlackBerry in October. The full keyboard made it not such a huge pain to send texts, but I still don't understand why I can't call or send an email. I'm much more comfortable with those. And, a quick call takes me much less time than a text. I know I could send tweets from my computer, but then, wouldn't I just want to send an email?!
Secondly, I don't know anyone who wants to get up-to-the minute news on my daily life. "Changing a diaper now. It's green and gross," just doesn't sound like the kind of news that everyone I'm wirelessly connected to via Sprint wants to hear about. What happened to having a personal and/or private life? Is it that I'm just not as interesting as all the other millions of people using Twitter on a daily basis? Or, are those millions of people not near as busy as I am on a daily basis?
I've heard of people using Twitter when at a restaurant. If they've never been to to the restaurant, they send a tweet requesting the best items from that menu. I'll just stick with asking the waiter or being spontaneous. I do have a mind of my own, sometimes.
However, I did find myself using Twitter last week for the first time. The Longhorn baseball team was playing in the regional tournament again Boston College. I assumed they would win the game and didn't stay home that night to follow it. When I returned home around 11 that night, I checked the local newspaper website to find that the game was in the 19th inning! Holy Cow! I tried to get the radio station carrying the game, but they were on to their regularly scheduled Fox Sports program. I ended up following the reporter covering the game via his Twitter updates online. I was maniacally refreshing the page every few seconds as he gave a play-by-play commentary all the way through the 25th inning. It was a historic moment that I'm glad I didn't miss, but I can't believe I was a part of it via Twitter. I was so close to signing up for Twitter just so that I could go to bed and receive the tweets on my phone instead of sitting at my computer until after 1 a.m. But, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Do you Twitter? Why or why not? Please enlighten me as to why I seem to be in the minority on this new technology.
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