What's wrong with Twitter?

[dennismoulton]

I'm curious to get some feedback here. Sorry for the loaded question but I'm hoping to gain a sense for what this group thinks about Twitter and their partner ecosystem. To begin with if you use Twitter (or identi.ca) are there limitations that should be explored via the platform or third party? If you did try it but don't anymore what happened?

[cpr]

I think if you're a social "hub" yourself, such as an Arrington or a Gruber, it's ideal.

If you're a techie who needs to actually get work done on hard technical problems, it's a total disaster, time- and distraction-wise.

One analogy would be the tech pundit (forget whom it was) who said reading the NYT at breakfast would send him into a mental maelstrom for the rest of the day, on overload. Twitter is like 100 micro-NYTs. ;-)

At least that's my (admittedly short stabs of, now and then) experience.

[Edit:] I suppose if you had a reasonably-sized close group of associates who only twittered a few times a day, you could keep it under control as a 'water cooler' experience.

[dennismoulton]

So in your case....dealing with a hard technical problem the current establishment of forums for richer discussions and interaction could leverage the power of community, no? Would a microblog version of what is now specific forums be enough of an experience to handle the majority of what needs to be covered? Would you be willing to participate in this manner if there was an extra step to finding the specific conversation home (within the platform) for the request, question, or dialogue?

[sharpn]

for me, signal < noise.

[bscofield]

Doesn't that just mean you're following the wrong people? It's not like Twitter forces you to listen to (or continue to listen to) people when you're not getting value from them.

[dennismoulton]

Glad you brought that up....what is valuable in twitter? The tangential ramblings of a handpicked group? I would argue that only a small subset of even the very best lists actually equates to value for most users.

[bscofield]

I've used Twitter to poll peers, learn new things, coordinate meetups, find out breaking news, discover useful resources, and more. All of those are valuable to me.

In the end, it's what's valuable to you. If you can't (or don't want to) find a group of people to follow that you find interesting, helpful, or whatever, that's fine. Just because you (or sharpn, or my wife) don't find the service valuable doesn't mean that there's no value in it for anyone, though.

[sharpn]

Good point - I can't find anything twitter does better for me than my current behaviour, but if others do then that's great; I might find a use for it in future.

[jwesley]

The value isn't in the listening, it's in the broadcasting.

[dennismoulton]

Sure, influencers and celebrities benefit from the broadcast without a doubt but is it possible that the back and forth conversation is limited (post, possibly a reply, and that is usually the end of it) to make the rest of the user base just feel like they have been heard. Of course there are consumers and contributors in the mix but I would like to think that more value could exist via real conversations.