One-Tweet Wonders 170
theodp writes "TIME has seen-the-future-and-it-is-Twitter. Slate, on the other hand, is more fascinated with the phenomenon of orphaned tweets, the messages left by people who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return (not unlike one-blog-post wonders). While some orphan tweets betray skepticism about microblogging ('I don't get it... what's the point of this thing?'), other one-and-done Twitterers demonstrate keen enthusiasm before disappearing ('I'm here!'), and some tweets hint that tragedy has cut a promising Twittering-life short ('it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?'). Slate notes that studies of Twitter accounts by Harvard and Nielsen suggest the service has been better at signing up users than keeping them, including the one-tweet wonders."
Nothing too new here (Score:2, Insightful)
Long term? (Score:3, Insightful)
It might be different if the messages were more directed, or useful. But sending messages so "my fans" (subscribers) can read them is just....
I use twitter daily, but never tweet. (Score:2, Insightful)
Whiners of all countries, unite! (Score:1, Insightful)
For all the people who hate Twitter, don't get it, like to make remarks about using twitter to inform others of bowel movements, how trivial it is to build it, et cetera:
Please reply to this thread to contain the complaining
Every story even remotely connected to Twitter gets the trolls crawling under their stones, mumbling how much they hate it.
Re:If you don't read TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes you wonder how many of these are some sort of throwaway code.
getting ready for cannes == set the date
Printing latest briefing == getting the drugs
Folding shirts == meet at designated spot
and so on.... Seems that twitter would be a great way to use one-time pads and code phrases.....
Twitter (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter (n):
1: A service design to indulge the sense of self importance by posting information that history will care little for.
2: A web site and infrastructure for passing small messages out to an open ended communication channel in which people what are extremely bored and track the likewise boring activities of others.
3: A simple text exchange in which creative people and some regular expressions can generate a swarm-like information network to gauge personal activity. For instance:
"by following a demographic of X a researcher can key in on how people feel about Y topic."
"An automatic event scheduler system can be generated by people tweeting possible event dates in which subscribers through a script can vector in and select an event date in which all or a certain threshold of particpants can agree to."
4: A method by which information is exchanged into a open ended channel. See Broadcast SMS 2.0
Name reservation? (Score:5, Insightful)
One possible reason for people to have unused accounts is simple to reserve the name. That is to say, to ensure that nobody can go around tweeting "in their name".
Re:Social Stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whiners of all countries, unite! (Score:2, Insightful)
Every story even remotely connected to Twitter gets the trolls crawling under their stones, mumbling how much they hate it.
Feeling the love, huh?
What you're referring to are are just parenthetical comments. The underlying question, and one that's yet to be answered, can be summed in a way that a Twitterer like yourself can appreciate:
What's the fucking point?
Absent one-off scenarios (the Obama campaign), I've yet to see any value in any of it. What I do see is a large number of people engaged in what could generously be described as trivia, and dragging down the quality of discourse for the rest of us to levels too embarassing to ponder.
I'll cite one example. Consider CNN, hardly known for its journalistic excellence, but an outlet with mass appeal. The guy that does the lunchtime shift (you know, the moron who tries to appear empassioned about news stories by shouting rhetorical but trollish questions at his audience and guests like a Tourette's sufferer). He spends much of his time actually reading tweets! And instead of brief headlines being appearing on the CNN scroller, we're now forced to read the contributions by every anonymous illiterate out there who has an opinion, an internet connection, and a fondness for extraneous ASCII characters.
Seriously, is this the kind of society we want to live in?
I don't understand the hate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not News (Score:4, Insightful)
This existed pre-internet. How many bought a diary and wrote one entry? Went out for a run, swim or to the gym once? Read a few pages of War and Peace? Only went to one foreign language lesson? Only bothered with a couple of piano/guitar/trumpet lessons?
While twitter has many problems, the fact that the majority of people tend to play with a new thing and then stop isn't new, or news.
Re:Either you are, or you aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
He said, on a forum.
Re:I don't understand the hate... (Score:2, Insightful)
It provides a "turn-key" CMS.
I'd write a novel in Twits, just to piss-off the service, but I just can't stand it enough to want to use it to foil it.
Re:I don't understand the hate... (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, don't hate a tool because you don't have a personal use for it.
I'm a mail courier (I don't have constant access to a computer and I don't have an iPhone). I love twitter because it's like a open chat room where anyone can talk, but I get to choose who I listen to. I get to have conversations with friends (who may not have cell phones) via sms, and they can even be private messages. SMS has a much lower power cost than an always on java instant messenger. Plus, they are all stored in a centralized location so if they send me a neat link I can't check out on my phone's awful browser, I don't have to go through a process to get it on my home computer later. And while you may not care that I am announcing that I'm going to have lunch at Chipotle on Miramar rd, one of my friends may want to meet me there.
People are valid in complaining about spam or marketers and other dregs, but does that mean we should be complaining about email or snail mail because I get sunday saver coupon books and ads?
Not true (Score:1, Insightful)
While you can't subscribe to a tweet stream, you can still access it without having to sign up.
See http://twitter.com/aplusk Or you can get the RSS feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19058681.rss
Re:Long term? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why, but after previewing my message above, part of it was cut off. My major complain with Twitter is the way it encourages a "celebrity" thought process from those tweeting. It's a lot like those blogs that people put up on the net, and abandon after one or two posts --- I'm sorry, but the majority of people out there posting their thoughts are not as interesting as they think they are. Including me.
Otherwise, I'd probably get paid to put my thoughts out there.
Re:the reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, you can subscribe to just about any stream of data from twitter with RSS. Of course, most non-techies won't know how to do that, but it's quite possible to be a pure twitter follower with nothing other than an RSS client.
Where twitter accounts do become useful is how they're a bridge between the informal aspects of IRC and IM and the persistence of email. Rather then spamming your friends with email or IM with a link to an interesting news story, you can just tweet it, and give them the control to follow up, ignore, or filter as they see fit.
Re:Twitter's not completely useless (Score:4, Insightful)
This is also an example of no compelling reason to use twitter for this. Email or text would both work in this situation.
How so? Say 100 people wanted to get the live scores without waiting for the web page to update. The OP could've created a special-purpose mailing list, walked everyone through signing up, and then deleted it afterward. With texting, I suppose he could've stored all their numbers and texted each one every time someone won a match.
Honestly the only difference I see between twitter and email/text is a lack of security. The information originator cannot control who has access to the feed.
Well, openness and the fact that email and text are one-to-one channels while Twitter (and Facebook) are one-to-many. But other than the access model and the difference between direct communication and broadcasting, yes, they're very much alike.
Re:Whiners of all countries, unite! (Score:3, Insightful)
Twitter content is like content on the web: some of it is valuable, but most of it is garbage. If you have a good search tool, you can more quickly get to the real value and out of the noise. Don't be distracted by the mindless chatter. And, if it turns out to be a fad, it will be gone soon enough.
Re:Twitter's not completely useless (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the difference between waiting for a web page to update and waiting for an email to hit your inbox?
In this case, it's the difference between the OP sending the results to everyone listening, and one of those listeners taking the data and uploading it to a website. In other words, between primary and secondary sources.
People know how to use email. Subscribing to a mail list is trivial. Last time I did it it involved sending the word subscribe to an email address. Everyone knows how to do this.
Your mouse-incapable uncle surely doesn't.
You also set up your example is invalid due to the artificial limitations you put on it. Why would you create a one off list? Why not leave the list around for the team?
That's possible, sure, but not in the context of the OP's situation. He was able to send text messages but quite likely not able to set up a mailing list while sitting on the bleachers watching the wrestling.
You're saying rather than doing that trivial step it's some how easier to have people create yet another account, this time with a system they are not familiar with.
You mean, like creating an account on the hypothetical listserv? Why are you under the impression that subscribing to a listserv is inherently easier than subscribing to Twitter?
Email is not one to one. You know you can put a semi colon followed by another address on the To: line right?
I'm pretty new to email [freesoftwaremagazine.com], but even I know that it's one-to-one. Adding multiple To: or Cc: or Bcc: entries is functionally identical to sending multiple copies of the message, unless you want to get into gray areas like single instance store on the recipient's end.
Texting, at least for me and I have a bare bare bones phone, is one to many. I can send the same text to multiple people just by selecting multiple recipients.
No. Texting is one-to-one, albeit repeatable. BTW, you might ask your carrier whether sending a single text to 50 recipients is billable as one message or 50. I bet the answer might surprise you.
I ask again. What advantages does it offer over existing technology other than being new?
Well, in the OP's case, it offered the rather huge advantage of letting him send one single SMS to Twitter instead of making him keep track of everyone who was interested so that he could notify each person individually, all without having to set up a listserv in advance and convincing everyone to subscribe to it. You might take note that despite your reasons why it shouldn't work, it did.