[run4yourlives]

Well, I've tried twitter for few weeks and ended up turning most of it off, because honestly, I don't give a damn that you're eating lunch at some new restaurant, or giving your dog a bath, or watching TV with your wife.

I find the service is basically a big giant intrusion into my life. 99% of the crap that pops up I just don't care about. 99% I put into the thing I can guarantee others don't care about either.

I think this social networking stuff has huge scaling problems outside of the navel gazing that happens both in the valley and during one's college years. Most people outside of these zones feel neither the need nor the desire to be that connected to others.

This isn't a knock on twitter as a service, just a general observation. It's going to take a profound change in thinking to create a world that twitter and others can truly exploit. This could also just be this Gen X'er showing his age, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

[johns]

And therein lies the brilliance of Twitter. If someone is a navel-gazer or otherwise uninteresting, you don't follow them anymore, end of problem. You have influence over the signal to noise ratio and you consume it on whatever schedule works for you.

[vlbrown]

But again, if You don't care what I am doing, that whatever possessed you to "follow" me? You only follow the people you WANT to follow. You only read what you WANT to read. You turn on SMS (or IM) notifications at YOUR preference. The only way Twitter can be a "big giant intrusion" into your life is if YOU turn that on!

It's like saying, 99% of the stuff on television is crap but failing to realize that you control the tv and you don't have to watch that stuff!

[run4yourlives]

No, it's like saying 99% of the stuff on TV is crap, so I don't see the value in having a TV.

Like I said, we're talking personal preferences here, so don't get so emotional about it.

[vlbrown]

I think "it's a giant intrusion into my life" was getting emotional. :)