Why Twitter Is Dumb (or why I don't see the point)

It's been awhile since I've had a good ol' ranting post, so here goes.

Twitter is dumb. I thought so when it came out, I tried it, deleted my account, and still think it's dumb, no matter what Oprah says.

Since facebook and Twitter are similar, I'm going to use one to talk about the other.

When facebook started a long time ago, it was a great way of getting connected with people at your college. When I first joined facebook in 2005, about a year after it had launched, it was just people at your local school, about 40 or 50 percent of universities were on it, and it was just a profile and a wall to write things on. That was IT. No status updates, no high schoolers and moms, no applications, nothing else extraneous. Not even private messaging.

Now, I'm not saying that all that new stuff is bad, in fact, I play Mafia Wars, talk to my mom, and have even used facebook messages to communicate about everything from parties to newspaper articles I worked on.

Which brings me to Twitter.

When facebook launched the status updates sometime in early 2006(the earliest mine goes back is March 5, 2007, and it says "Caleb Sommerville ready for a break." That took like 30 minutes to find.), it was a little awkward, but gradually grew into a fun way to communicate where you were, what you were doing, and let your friends (and then, your family...) that you weren't studying in the least bit.

When Twitter launched in early 2007, it was basically just the status update part of facebook. Nothing else. A tiny picture of yourself, an odd "tagging" system, and a way to search other people's statuses.

That's it, and that's all it remains as to this day.

And then, last year, Oprah tried it, and the whole world nerded out and Tweeted about everything, calling it revolutionary and microblogging and a whole of other things, even though facebook had been doing the same and more for the past two years.

Here's my problem with Twitter. It's a ripoff of status updates that's even less interesting then your uncle's facebook page that he updated once with "Artie Blankovich is trying out the whole Facebook thing. Weird Stuff!" It's not revolutionary, and microblogging is a made up word to go along with a concept that facebook status updates aced long before this.

The ability to "tag"/search through statuses is okay, I guess, and some have even tried using it to track trends and current events, but it isn't nearly accurate/scientific enough to warrant keeping around just for that purpose. Facebook even tried doing that a while ago with a trend engine. I don't know if it's still around.

In fact, for all the chatter, Twitter users aren't even that loyal. In a Nielsen study that was updated in April 2009, around 60% of all Twitter users abandon it within the first month.

Come to think of it, that's about as long as I had my twitter account.

The point is, it's facebook status updates sans the facebook. It's design is pretty sleek, and facebook even remodeled with rounded edges and a sleeker look after Twitter came around.

But all in all, slick design and questionable tracking options do not back up the buzz surrounding this "service."

And don't even get me started on how susceptible it is to hackers.