[rarestnews]

Neither sarcasm, nor direct statement. Just a way to stop argument that would lead us both nowhere.

We have different beliefs. I'm not planning of convincing you to my point-of-view (it would pretty much be impossible and also useless for me, I'm not running a religion) and your arguments don't convince me.

[epi0Bauqu]

Convince you of what? That I don't believe myself that I find Twitter useful in those cases?

[rarestnews]

I'm posting this only cause you asked, not to start flame war. Like I said don't want to convince you to my opinion (and it would be impossible).

...convince me that Twitter is more useful than harmful (especially to your time and self-assessment), I'd rather have 1 real-life friend and 1 real-life enemy tell me their opinion about my startup, than any sampling of random 1000 Twitter followers. I might prefer opinion of HN readers (smart guys here), but not the ranks of people reading Kutcher's tweets or things like fart-tweeting chairs. I tried reading the smartest folks, but even they struggle to tell some coherent thought in 140 chars. Then it turns out, those guys aren't really there, but rather ghostwriters. And Shaq. Who as great basketball player as he is - isn't exactly the mastermind. So, who else are Twitting? Oprah. Give me a break.

Twittering is just another way to passively entertain yourself, like TV. Just like TV remote - you have to press a few buttons occasionally and show goes on - a lot of fluff-fluff-fluff, then maybe something useful and then again 59 minutes 45 seconds of fluff. Hardly worth spending hour to go through fluff (commercials in TV case or what your "follower" ate for breakfast or who he's in petty war against who to reach 1M followers in case of Twitter). It's just not worth the time spent.

In my opinion - if you want opinion on your startup.. Add UserVoice. Do you want to promote it? Buy ads or do some smart marketing that doesn't require money. Using Twitter you're just following the herd which spends 99% of their time on useless reading of other peoples... let's call them.. thoughts.. or Re-Thhooughts in many cases.

Once again I remind you that this is my BELIEF and I couldn't convince you of that and you won't convince me of opposite using arguments you presented. So, let's just move our own ways.

[nonrecursive]

First, I don't believe the article was meant to be persuasive. As the OP mentions, he's had people ask him about how he uses twitter and he wrote the article to answer that question. I don't understand why you've assumed a confrontational attitude from the get-go.

Second, this comment is more useful than your first. Even though it's not responding to anything in the actual article, you at least give your opinion and reasons for it. As opposed to writing, "THIS ISN'T USEFUL!!! COME ON!?" Your comment is also useful to me personally because I find twitter useful and seeing your objections to it has caused me to think about and clarify my reasons for appreciating twitter.