The Twitter.
I've hated Twitter ever since I first heard about it. For at least a couple of reasons. Probably more if I thought longer about it.
-“Who really cares what I am doing, every hour of the day?” wondered Alex Beam, a Boston Globe columnist, in an essay about Twitter last month. “Even I don’t care.”
-I don't really need another gee-dee Internet Thing in my life.
-Isn't the status update on Facebook the same thing? Why do we need this too?
But lately I've started to come around on it, maybe. Basically for reasons mentioned in this New York Times Magazine piece:
Each little update - each individual bit of social information - is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.
I know a few of you do this jazz and will probably try to sell me on it now, but what of the vast majority of you who have never mentioned it in your journals? Are you using it? (I'm sorry, I refuse to call it 'twittering' or to call them 'tweets' at this point. It still feels too stupid to me.)
I still don't have an account, but rest assured that if that changes you will hear about it - always and forever - on my Livejournal.
-“Who really cares what I am doing, every hour of the day?” wondered Alex Beam, a Boston Globe columnist, in an essay about Twitter last month. “Even I don’t care.”
-I don't really need another gee-dee Internet Thing in my life.
-Isn't the status update on Facebook the same thing? Why do we need this too?
But lately I've started to come around on it, maybe. Basically for reasons mentioned in this New York Times Magazine piece:
Each little update - each individual bit of social information - is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.
I know a few of you do this jazz and will probably try to sell me on it now, but what of the vast majority of you who have never mentioned it in your journals? Are you using it? (I'm sorry, I refuse to call it 'twittering' or to call them 'tweets' at this point. It still feels too stupid to me.)
I still don't have an account, but rest assured that if that changes you will hear about it - always and forever - on my Livejournal.