The good, the bad, and the "Why the hell am I using this?". A reflection.

By: Julien Roche 41074255

Twitter is a social network service that allows people to check what other people are currently doing, this has its benefits and its drawbacks.  While it might be of interest to "follow" individuals such as friends, politicians, or celebrities, most of my experience has been "Why the hell are you tweeting this?".  I first learned of twitter from  technology podcast, the pod-caster was commenting about how the service was consistently down.  In subsequent episodes there was criticism about the ridiculous things that people would post to their twitter accounts.  

I could understand this, I would not want tweets stating "I'm doing the dishes.", "Changing babies diaper.", and "Spring cleaning" to cross my screen.  This kind of information I really don't care to hear about.  My first tweet "enjoying a cold beer" was pretty pathetic, who cares if I'm enjoying a cold, crisp full-strength beer.  If I had posted "I think I'm becoming an alco", then I could see how that would be important to someone(hopefully).  

Having recently signed up for a twitter account I've come to understand why some people post useless messages, they feel obligated.  Since signing up and having some friends follow me, I have had an itch to post something, anything, even the most mundane tasks of daily life.  Luckily I’ve had the piece of mind not to post these, anyone following me should be thankful of this.

I feel Facebook is a better way of keeping track of people, I've been using this for a while to keep in touch with friends and family.  I don't feel the urge to post something every day, just when I'm doing something special.  The layout makes it easier to see the latest posts from people at a glance, using twitter, it can be cumbersome as the tweets are in a list structure.  I found myself scrolling down the window past multiple tweets from the same source just to see what another person’s last tweet.  Although it was nice to be able to see what was on peoples thoughts as time progressed.

One other factor that I consider important is the fact that I control who sees what I post on my Facebook page.  While Twitter has a similar feature, it seems redundant to have to handle this on a second social network.  I would rather just have one place to check up on the people that I want to.  My routine includes checking 3 different email accounts (2 web based, 1 mail client based) and then maybe checking my Facebook friends, this way if I have time to follow up on anything interesting, I can, else it can wait.  If anything really important has happened, they can use other means to get in touch with me.  

Although the latest change of "What are you doing" to "What are you thinking" was irksome.  It actually made me stop and wonder to myself "What am I thinking?".  Unfortunately, I drew a blank, which made me feel brain dead.  Some have speculated that this was done to be more “Twitter like”, to me, I think about the book “1984” by George Orwell.  

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Speaking of “1984”, a friend of mine recently cancelled his Facebook account.  His decision was based on the recent change stated above, and his belief that the government was snooping in on what he was posting.  This made me wonder, what the hell is he posting that he is worried about the government finding out?  Is he posting tax evasion tips or drug dealing on Facebook?  

Do drug dealers have Facebook and Twitter accounts?  I imagine what these would look like,  “Hey, got some good stuff, will be at corner of 5th and Main.”  or “Taking the new cigar boat out to make a pickup from Cuba”.  

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The mobility aspect of Twitter seen as many to be a great asset to their everyday lives.  While access to Facebook is limited to internet connections using browsers and applications, people can send and receive (only in limited countries) tweets from any mobile phone via SMS.  I can see this as a benefit and as an intrusion, do I really want to know what the people I’m following are doing right when it’s posted?  Short answer is: no.  

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The first “I’m at the DMV waiting in line, watching some guy pick his nose.”  tweet I receive on my mobile will be the next time I have to buy a new mobile.  Can we say: “High velocity impact against a hard surface (probably concrete, actually, make that almost definitely concrete)”.

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The implications from being able to tweet from a mobile have been recently made clear as seen when a Senator from the US tweeted his arrival on a secret visit to Baghdad.  This raised a few eyebrows among security consultants everywhere, wouldn’t stalkers enjoy the benefits if their targets always tweeted their current locations or where they would be going at any particular time?

In short, I will not continue using Twitter, but I will continue my usage of Facebook.  Luckily I am not following anyone that posts tweets like the above examples, I just feel like it’s a waste of bandwidth.  While some of the information that they post is interesting, they are talked about in podcasts/vidcasts, or I’ve heard this information through other means, i.e. Digg.com.  This information is not essential to me, and I already have my necessary contacts as part of my Facebook account or I subscribe to their shows where they converse about the topics I’m interested in.