All Annotations of Why I Stopped Using Twitter - Publishing 2.0[Preview]

saved by9 people, first byMichel Roland on 2007-12-12, last byTobias Verhoog on 2008-08-05

• For a period last summer, I was a Twitter addict — addict really is the right word. I found Twitter to be mesmerizing

• Let me immediately qualify that — it’s not that ALL of Twitter is a waste of time. It’s that TOO MUCH of Twitter is a massive waste of time. Some aspects are hugely valuable and well worth the time. There’s really interesting “conversation.” There’s connectedness. There’s discovery.

  
  

  But the noise to signal ratio is WAY too high. And the temptation to Tweet for the sake of Tweeting is WAY too high.

  
  

  An example of high noise to signal is the Twitter “half conversation” — where two user are talking to each other directly, but you only follow one of them. So you hear half the conversation, like listening to someone on their cell phone. It’s quasi-voyeuristically interesting sometimes, but mostly it’s just annoying.

• TOO MUCH of Twitter is a massive waste of time

• There’s really interesting “conversation.” There’s connectedness. There’s discovery.

  
  

  But the noise to signal ratio is WAY too high.

• the Twitter “half conversation” — where two user are talking to each other directly, but you only follow one of them
• the nature of networks means it’s impossible to ever follow everyone who the people you’re following are following — because then you’d have to follow the people those people are following, and the people THOSE people are following
• it does make me wonder whether it will ever catch on beyond geeks who thrive on spending massive quantities of their lives on the web.
• So to all my Twitter friends — I’ll miss you…but not really. I read your blogs and you read mine, so I guess what I’ll really miss are your random musings.