twitter, thumbs up or down? Options

[Melissa]

[mipadi]

I can't really see Twitter as anything more than a gimmicky novelty.

It really only seems to fill two niches:

1. As a way for people to let others constantly know of their statuses.
2. As a form of "microblogging", in which people post their personal thoughts (similar to how most people use Facebook statuses).

#1 is clearly narcissism in its purest form. Most people's lives -- including my own -- are so boring that I'd be embarrassed to post a constant stream of updates to the web.

#2 is a bit more interesting. As as avid blogger myself, I see great power in being able to publish your thoughts. At times I feel like a bit of a narcissist for keeping a blog, but if a blog is entertaining, then it's fun for other people to read, and not really narcissistic. The problem with Twitter, though, is that there's a limit to the length of these so-called "microblogs" -- 140 characters, if memory serves. Unless you're writing haiku, it's pretty damn hard to say anything really interesting in 140 characters or less, so I don't really see Twitter as an engaging blogging platform -- and in that sense, it is kind of narcissistic. (Plus, you can't respond unless you, too, have a Twitter account.)

But maybe I'm just too old for this shit.