Ads, porn and one-way chat... Twitter test run soon grows tiresome | Bangkok Post: tech

GOBBLEDEGOOK

I've recently spent a few weeks playing around with Twitter. No doubt you've heard about it and maybe you're wondering what it's all about. Maybe you already know what it's all about - in that case, I think you'll find my opinion of it is rather different.

Twitter offers little to hold the attention unless you’re stuck in traffic or on the train.

If you want to get in on the so-called fun, go to http://www.twitter.com and sign up.

What do you do? Well, you Tweet. That is, you send out messages. Who do you Tweet to? Well, whoever decides to "follow" you. At first it will be just a few of your friends, then maybe more of your friends then a bunch of complete strangers. To build up your list, you'll have to follow a bunch of strangers yourself. Some of those people will follow you back. Some won't. And be prepared to be followed by spammers and marketers galore, all trying to sell you something.

You'll want to do a few searches for keywords that describe your interests: For example, Thailand, gadgets, movies, celebrities, whatever it is that interests you. That's a fast way to find people who are interested in the same thing(s) that you are. You'll then want to follow those people and, when it's appropriate, reply to them (not DM, "direct message" - only the people following you can see a DM). This reply makes them aware of your existence, and if they think your profile looks interesting, they'll start following you. Or not. There's no way to tell. You can DM anyone you like, but if they're not already following you, the message is just tossed away. (That's just one of many things Twitter fails to make clear to new users.)

In my experience, there are three types of Twitterers: 1) The self-promoters and celebrities, who are trying to sell you something or sell you on someone. Some of the celebrities you will find out there include Kirstie Ally, Wil Wheaton, Lady Gaga and more. There are also newspapers and magazines and all sorts of news services wanting to keep you updated (Bangkok Post included). 2) Companies which want to keep you up to date on their latest news.

3) All the lurkers, which seems to form the vast majority. They lurk in the background, but never Twitter or Tweet. It's hard to tell if these people maybe saw Twitter and joined up, then dropped it the next day, or if they're just not interested in joining the conversations.

Speaking of conversations, Twitter is, basically, at least for an American living in Bangkok and not speaking Thai, a one-way conversation. Yet, even when I stay up late at night, when everyone in the US is getting up and going to work and getting the day started, the conversation is still one-sided.

I purposely said very provocative things just to see if anyone at all would respond, and they did not. For example, I Tweeted, "I should kill more people" - and nothing! There's a whole bunch of folks following me, but apparently they think I'm just being silly (I am).

Twitter is basically what we used to call newsgroups. A closer analogy would be a messageboard, like the ones that the folks over at thaivisa.com offer. Unlike a Newsgroup or a messageboard, your Tweet can only contain 140 characters - a few short sentences. So, not much gets said.

There's the "ReTweet" function, which fills your Twitterbox with a bunch of stuff "ReTweeted" from elsewhere. Also, many of the Tweets are nothing more than URLs pointing to stories that the sender thinks are interesting.

Google just introduced this type of messaging with its Buzz service.

At the end of the day, I found Twitter to be tiresome. Not only do I have to check emails and faxes and letters and phonecalls and look at my Facebook page, now I have to deal with all these Tweets, most of them mind-numbingly boring.

I was able to find a few witty souls that send out funny Tweets that are a joy to read, but for the most part my Twitterbox was filled with URLS to stories on the Internet, or URLs that point to pictures, or promotions of products and product websites, or Tweets from people (a lot of writers, for example) promoting themselves and their books. Some of the people who follow you are just marketing companies or porn factories.

Driving Twitter is the fact that you can Tweet from your handheld device, for example a smart phone.

I think a lot of people are Tweeting during their commute on public transport and enjoy being able to while away the time looking at or writing Tweets. Without these handheld users driving the service, I doubt very much whether Twitter could have gained as much traction.

It's one of those things you'll have to try for yourself. You may get more joy from Tweeting than I did (I hope so), or you may be one of those folks with a long commute and nothing better to do. It's the perfect way to kill time. And one suspects that the younger generation is more interested in Twitter-like stuff than us old fogies.

Twitter is part of what's being defined as "Social Media". Next time, we'll look at Facebook, another part of the Social Media arena, one which I think is far more valuable.