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?"
simplistic view.... (Score:4, Interesting)
i know the most common use is that simplistic model: someone types something like a micro-blog entry....took fluffy for a walk. but it's more useful as a glue. using modules and apis, a small business (martial arts school, for example) can update their website, facebook fans, twitter followers, and SMS recipients with info (class tonight will be no-gi).
sure, you could have coded a quick text-bounce on your own server, but twitter makes it pretty easy.
Twitter is useful? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect very strongly that if you were to ask 1000 random people, you'd get a very similar opinion of the content of /.
In other words, "Surprise! People are different, and some aren't interested in the things you happen to be interested in. And that doesn't make them (or you) defective."
The execution tweet was a good one (Score:5, Interesting)
But thats what I use twitter for, to follow the release of news stories.
Unscientific survey says... (Score:1, Interesting)
..absolutely nothing you should care about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection
Social Self-outcasts (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to go to a party, you have to accept being at a party.
Twitter is fine, if you follow people you find interesting, and if you are interesting yourself.
But if you just click on the Trending Topic links, then yes, you're going to discover that 90+% of the things people say from behind their cellphones is pointless blather. And that's the people, not the fake accounts that are using the TT to get undeserved attention. Those are half or more of any #1 topic.
Once they get how it works, engineers should love twitter. Not least because there's a finite probability that http://twitter.com/TheRealNimoy [twitter.com] will respond to you. A thing like that can make your decade.
Only 76% Useless (Score:5, Interesting)
More noise (Score:4, Interesting)
50M tweets? That is nothing. (Score:1, Interesting)
50M tweets? That is nothing. How many phone calls do you think happened during the same period of time? How many conversations? Aren't those "social network tools" too?
I got a twitter account 2 weeks ago and quickly posted something about my belly button lint to be certain I'd fit in. Haven't bothered to go back there. Even the good posts aren't as good as RSS feeds.
I simply do not see the point of twitter. Clearly, I'm an engineer.
And only 285 engineers responded to the poll? How many were invited to the poll, 285,000? I'd say that is a more telling statistic.
Ok, see how little you cared about my writing here? Compared to most tweets that I've seen - I'm a genius and I didn't say anything useful here either.
Self Limiting (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Twitter because it's an easy way for me and my developer friends to share transient tidbits like new tools, quick questions and interesting links.
I don't follow people who use it as a journal and I don't really concern myself with those who follow me.
I don't see why more IT people use it this way. It beats sending e-mail or trying to maintain contacts via multiple IM networks (some of which are blocked by various employers).
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
The same thing can pretty much be said about the whole internet to be fair.
Can be? More like *has* been said, and *continues* to be said. It started with personal web pages -- my first Geocities page proclaimed "I love my wife and kids!", as though that were something unique in the world. But I also had a page of cool background wallpapers that I'd found, back when that was a novel concept... and a little outfit called Yahoo! found my "Wallpaper Heaven" page and suddenly it was getting hundreds of hits a day.
Blogs, too -- 90% useless, but the remaining 10% are either essential to my job in IT, or just interesting. Fortunately, Google does a pretty good job of figuring out which ones are worth reading, just by looking at who's linking to them.
I have to agree with the other posters... if Twitter is achieving anywhere near 20% signal-to-noise, it's a resounding success. And as the search tools mature, it'll only get better. Or, to misquote Douglas Adams, it coul eventually disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
Dot-plan? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 actually reminds me the most of the old unix "plan" file which popped up when users were "fingered".
But this plan is constantly being re-edited over and over and over and over and over . . . you get the idea.
Easy to Search, Summarize, & Aggregate... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!"'
I think there's more too it than a desperate attempt to appear relevant -- the features of Twitter tend to fall in a certain sweet spot of interest for traditional broadcasters. For one thing, tweets are just about the right length for soundbite-driven short-cycle media. For another, it's really easy to search and in theory at least get a feel for zeitgeist by looking at trending topics in aggregate -- and profit-driven broadcast media is all about "eyeballs," so they're naturally interested in what people are (in theory) interested in.
You could make the same arguments... (Score:3, Interesting)
You could make the same arguments about the printing press, the internet, or speech in general. With any medium open to everyone you're going to have 10-20% quality stuff and 80-90% garbage. That doesn't change the fact that Twitter has given a face to faceless corporations, given us insight into the mind of geniuses, and even helped fuel a revolution in Iran.
Sifting through the cruft might be the next big challenge for twitter, but let's not throw it away because there is so much noise on there. That's like throwing away speech because it could be used to tell you about how I'm taking a dump.
I used to think Twitter was worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
But after observing it for a while, I've come to some conclusions as well.
Watching an individual tweeting is like watching a neuron firing; it doesn't appear to be doing anything useful. Stand back a little, and you can see that neurons (or those that tweet) are parts of functional groups. Step back further and you have a conscious brain.
This is the way I started to look at Twitter, and the analogy seems to work. The first place you find out about major events now? Twitter. First some tweets ("Hey, did anyone near xxx feel something?"). Then comes the higher level analysis ("Did the paint factory explode? No, it was an earthquake!"). Then comes the sensory input (twipics, twitvids). Then the emotional response ("OMG, so many people injured!").
If you look at Twitter this way, it's almost like looking into the hive-mind. It's very interesting to observe, whether you participate or not. There are multiple search and aggregation engines, though they can lag realtime significantly during major events. It's better to have 'probes' (follows) into various areas of interest.
Re:Old people? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Breakfast? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's very little signal that can be unambiguously packed into 140 characters.
There's even less if you're trying to clarify something that was unambiguous. In the case of the World Cup, the only "S" would be "Team X scored", maybe "Player X Yellow/Red card", or "Game over, final score X:Y".
Explaining why something was a bad call would often take more than 140 characters.
And in explaining a simple S:N filter in the context of something as simple as a soccer game, I'm already into the kilobyte range.
Now try to do that with something technical. No fargin' way. It just doesn't scale for anything other than impulsive "OMGWTFBBQ" reactions. A million people going OMGWTFBBQ is a signal - but the signal there is in the number of tweets, not the actual content of the tweets themselves. Twitter metadata is interesting, but actually following tweets is crap.
Re:Twitter is useful? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wouldn't you have to do that a thousand times to get something remotely interesting?
What we need is something like AlterSlash [alterslash.org] which compiles lots of highly rated Slashdot posts into one place.
That I would use because there are people smarter than me who use twitter.
I already use Slashdot in RSS and it's pre-filtered for spam for me.
Re:it's like micro-blogs (Score:3, Interesting)
You sound very bitter.
Maybe you misunderstand why most people use facebook. It is not to glorify themselves to a global internet audience; if that were the case, facebook wouldn't have 'friends' or privacy settings. Facebook for global consumption would basically just be myspace or geocities. Which it clearly is not.
My conversations on facebook are private among my friends. My pictures that- according to people like you- I apparently take only to make myself more interesting to the world at large are in fact quite private, with access limited to only my friends.
Here's an analogy to your complaint: You are walking down the street and see a party happening in a fenced-off yard. You angrily walk up to the gate and yell, "No one gives a damn about your party! No one cares about what you have to say! You'll die alone!"
The party guests, puzzled, returned to their friendly conversations while you stomp off, alone and angry.
I think that when you discuss 'insignificance', you might be projecting a little bit. That, or you don't have any friends on FB or twitter that are interesting or entertaining. Which is really just kind of sad for you.
What's especially ironic is that your post- which focused on the infinitesimal fraction of the world that cares what you think- was posted on a public forum, _modded up_, and then someone who you've probably never met (me) took the time to write a response.
-b
Re:Inanities Inc. (Score:3, Interesting)
The most useful thing I've found twitter to be good for is posting disinformation, or implausible scenarios.
Want people to not know where you are? Post messages about the city/cities that you're visiting. How about announcing the alien/zombie invasion.
Really, I know some people keep up with their twits. I only ever question "why?"
Push vs Pull (Score:1, Interesting)
The greatest advance of the Internet is that it allows people to pull information. It creates a more capitalist supply/demand environment. If you don't like it, don't surf there.
I don't buy McDonalds food, but you won't catch me bagging them or giving them a hard time. I don't like what they have on offer, so I shall go elsewhere. Same goes for Twitter. If I ever hear of a tweet worth hearing, I'll reconsider.
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
...or you're easily amused. Just sayin'