Why Engineers Don't Like Twitter 460
PabloSandoval48 writes, "A recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers found that 85% don't use Twitter. More than half indicated that the statement 'I don't really care what you had for breakfast' best sums up their feelings about it." Reader mattnyc99 notes a related article in which the authors analyzed the content of tweets during a recent World Cup game, finding 76% of them to be useless.
"Out of 1,000 tweets with the #worldcup hashtag during the game, only 16 percent were legitimate news and 7.6 percent were deemed 'legitimate conversation' — which leaves 6 percent spam, 24 percent self-promotion, about 17 percent re-tweets, and a whopping 29 percent of useless observation (like this). Is the mainstream media making too big a deal out of the avalanche of World Cup tweets, or is the world literally flooding the zone?"
Breakfast? (Score:5, Insightful)
If your reason for not liking Twitter is "I don't really care what you had for breakfast," the problem isn't Twitter - it's that you need to find some more interesting friends.
Just like a telephone, its usefulness depends on who you have on the other end of the line.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the method, but the users (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of our modern information delivery and socializing methods are actually pretty inventive and useful, until they are populated with the masses of morons that inhabit our Earth. And the one tweet the submitter linked to is a good example. It did actually have good information in it - Portugal scored a goal. But it was also filled with a bunch of personalized exclamation, which most people don't want to see.
The great thing is, you're not forced to view that person's Twitter feed. The hard part is finding one you ARE interested in.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:4, Insightful)
you need to find some more interesting friends
These are engineers we're talking about. They're lucky they have friends at all.
On a more serious note, what percentage of people are "interesting" enough to have worthwhile tweets?
Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps MSM likes Twitter because it's the equivalent of 1,000 monkeys with 1,000 typewriters. There are so many people saying so many things, that they can likely find a quote that states whatever they want to state, but they then get to claim somebody else said it. Deniability is probably easier than fact checking.
Old people? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd also like to know the age of these "engineers".
I'm a 25 year old engineer and I love twitter, because I like to know what my friends are doing.
Most people that don't like twitter just don't understand it, or are the kind of people that don't accept tech to begin with. Twitter really isn't supposed to be for "normal" people. At least not until techy becomes the norm, which is happening.
-taylor
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except I can find redeeming content on various parts of other websites that provide actual information. I don't with twitter, or facebook. Both can die in a blaze of their own fiery doom for all I care.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm an engineer, and my reason for avoiding Twatter is twofold:
1. SNR is way too low for me to bother with.
2. http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/06/10/is-allowing-your-child-to-study-while-on-facebook-morally-equivalent-to-drinking-while-pregnant/ [calnewport.com]
Engineers make the world go around . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't give a shit about Lindsay Lohan SCRAM (although the technology is interesting). They don't really care who killed Michael Jackson. And they probably think that Jesse James was an outlaw from the 1800's.
But they do seem to keep everything that civilization needs running . . .
Re:Not the method, but the users (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment is 136 characters long, which is below the maximum tweet length. So either your comment is useless, or the answer is yes. Besides, a lot of tweets contain a link.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I think the problem is that people on both sides, whether they love Twitter or hate it, are thinking that it's something more than it is. Its like a blog, but short. It's like an SMS message, but not necessarily directed at a particular person. It's like an IM status, but not tied to IM. It was a slightly interesting approach to dealing with Internet communication, but it's really not that unique or interesting. Some people use Twitter for inane information. Some people do the same thing with email. Some people post really inane blog entries. No big deal.
But somehow the media has bought into Twitter as some kind of technological marvel. "ZOMG! People are tweeting about the World Cup! Let's put those tweets on our show, so we can pretend to be technologically savvy and relevant!"'
it's like micro-blogs (Score:5, Insightful)
By now, we should be familiar with the issue at hand.
It happened when people started making "personal webpages". Then came blogs. Then Facebook et al. Now Twitter.
Basically, most of the world lives in the misguided assumption that at least a tiny fraction of the rest of the world is interested in them. Statistically speaking, that's not true. But we have this old tribal desire to "express ourselves", to communicate with the rest of the tribe.
There's a few billion people on the Internet today. How many of them may even theoretically care about your dog, your house, your opinion of last nights local television program, or, in fact, you? A high mark of a thousand, for most of us. 10,000 at most for everyone who's not at least a minor celebrity. Even those 10k are less than 0.0005% of the Internet population. ppm is a better measure than percent here. It's a single-digit ppm. For the majority of us, not even 1 ppm.
Or, in short, nobody(*) fucking cares. Not what the name of your dog is and not what you think about soccer.
Twitter is Geocities, only shorter, and with even less content.
(*) where "nobody" is equal, but not identical, to zero, for all practical purposes.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:2, Insightful)
no, that is the problem with twitt, everyone who participates in it seems to think that every mundane detail of their little ant life must be documented on some glorious wall
if nothing else to help them forget that they are an insignificant twitt telling the world about the eggs they had for breakfast, as if anyone cares
what does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
what does it matter if only 16%, or 1.6%, or even 0.16% of all posts are any good?
The power of aggregates, filters, and search engines is that it doesn't matter what the signal to noise ratio is, you can quite easily cut through it all and find more of what you want.
Quick way of saying I don't want to be ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is really a quick way of saying that you don't want to bombarded by trivial details, irrelevant information or even relevant information. Just give me everything all at once and edit out the crap.
I don't care how interesting someone may be, getting updates about every little thing would be annoying; regardless of how relevant it may be.
Re:Content versus medium (Score:3, Insightful)
A better reason to hate Twitter is the obsolete 140-character limit
which in most cases also makes them vapid.
There is a large industry focused around making vapid two hour long movies.
The problem is not brevity.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. SNR is way too low for me to bother with.
2. long link snipped
1. The SNR is entirely dependant on who you follow... so, if you get a lot of N, it means you're following the wrong S, which is your fault.
2. You linked to an article asking about the MORAL integrity of using one of these sites while studying? I could post an article "Is allowing someone to post on slashdot morally equivalent to assisting with suicide?". It's such a Glenn Beck move.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except I can find redeeming content on various parts of other websites that provide actual information. I don't with twitter, or facebook.
Then your friends are boring. I guess I just hang out with more interesting people.
I'm serious. I see something interesting or funny on Facebook or Twitter at least a few times a day. If you don't, then that's because of the people generating the content you're reading.
Yeah it's a toy. (Score:3, Insightful)
So let's see in the past week via Twitter I received notes live minutes from the Austin City Council, received crime and real estate stats for my zip code, registered my concerns about regional mobility with our Capital Metro, and notified my extended family of several cute things the kids said. That's just stuff off the top of my head.
Twitter's a really useful tool. Much like the web, if all you're getting is what someone ate for breakfast, you're doing it wrong.
At the same time, I'm completely ok with the majority engineers not "getting" social networking technologies. It makes it easier for me to find work.
Re:It's simple jealousy in my case (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breakfast? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that kind of like complaining about a penthouse suite because the people who are frequently in there are highly paid escorts?
Or to put it in a car analogy, complaining about corvette because the driver doesn't know how to drive?
You can't complain about Twitter because of the people who use it, especially when it gives you the architecture necessary to ignore what you want and listen to what you do want.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:3, Insightful)
If your reason for not liking Twitter is "I don't really care what you had for breakfast," the problem isn't Twitter - it's that you need to find some more interesting friends.
Just like a telephone, its usefulness depends on who you have on the other end of the line.
Precisely - I love twitter because I get immediate and brief headlines that can be easily followed up from various sources, including Science, Nature, NASA, the Economist, the BBC, and various other sources that are not otherwise succinctly aggregated in one place. Oh, and some hot chick who is off exploring the depths of the ocean in a big boat. This is where twitter, I think, works well.
But this does, however, beg the very important question - what do people on Slashdot listen to for their tech tweets?
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the Internet in microcosm. Engineers first used the Internet to pass technical information. Noise was kept to a minimum so work could get done. Then the engineers were surprised to find that the general public had an intense interest in fluff and chatter.
So it's the same thing with Twitter. We mostly ignore it, unless we're using it for geek thing we find important.
Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Twitter is SOCIAL, Engineers are ANTI-SOCIAL, and you wonder why the two aren't a match made in heaven?
Twitter lacks any sort of competitive appeal, sex appeal, or intellectual appeal.
It is used to disseminate socially relevant knowledge, and humor.
Sports. Celebrity Gossip. One-Liners.
These are the cornerstones of twitter.
Having said that, if you want the truly great tweets, you need a reliable third party to sift through the junk and gather them for you.
Unfortunately this process has become increasingly inefficient with the demise of Conan's Late Night Twitter Tracker.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like any bog-standard RSS reader?
hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently subsistence farmers and nomadic goat herders like it even less.
Re:Yeah it's a toy. (Score:3, Insightful)
It only falls into the "what I had for breakfast" category if no one who is following me is interested in what my daughters are doing. I happen to know that all of my family members who follow me do so explicitly for this type of post. Therefore even if it's banal, it's exactly the type of banality my audience is looking for.
"Things you are not interested in" != "Things no one is interested in".
Re:Engineers make the world go around . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
If you asked a trucker, s/he'd tell you that it's actually truckers that make the world go 'round.
It's all about perception from where you're sitting.
Re:More noise (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it actually leads to MORE succinct discourse. Minimalism leading towards conciseness.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breakfast? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm. Maybe. But, you do realize that some IRC channels are actually collaborative support channels, and development tools? Does twitter offer anything like that?
Re:Easy to Search, Summarize, & Aggregate... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but in the rare occasion I do tune into some sort of news, I want to hear REAL news, not what fluffyfanboi2002 had to say about a topic. If I want that shit, I'll go join twitter myself.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its like a blog, but short.
So it's like a blog, but without the opportunity for in depth information.
It's like an SMS message, but not necessarily directed at a particular person.
So it's like an SMS, but with nothing I personally need to know.
It's like an IM status, but not tied to IM.
So it's like an IM, but... aw hell, IM sucks too.
one side of a conversation (Score:3, Insightful)
I find twitter unusable - seemingly every account I'm interested in reading - say for service announcements from my hosting provider - is filled with replies to other users, conversations I'm not a part of. Every single line is
@ someuser - Some text totally out of context
@ someuser - Some text totally out of context
@ someuser - Some text totally out of context
It's like being in a room with someone whose supposed to be making an announcement but are actually on their mobile phone - not interesting and terribly annoying.
Maybe I'm missing some option to turn that irrelevant waste off, but they've already lost me because of it.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:1, Insightful)
what is supposed to be happening is it is like sitting in the stadium with all the other people around you who are cheering, commenting and jumping up and down, and generally being excited, involved and having a good time
Except that it's not like that at all.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:2, Insightful)
English, motherfuckers, do you speak it?
Twitter is literally for "twittering", not engineering communication.
The name wasn't an accident. It's for mood-setting housewife babble.
There is nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with expecting more than that.
Re:Breakfast? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Twitter is not social. Twitter is a medium explicitly designed for people who don't give a shit whether or not anyone is interested in the crap they're saying, because they're going to say it anyway. That's not social.
Re:one side of a conversation (Score:2, Insightful)
Those @replies don't show up in your feed when you subscribe. You get only original posts. The poster has to do something like ".@xyz" to force a reply to show up in all subscriber feeds.