This blog post is an extra post (my forth) and response to Quentin Hunstad’s blog (“Response #8: Twitter Do’s for finding your followers”).
Quentin is blogging on Twitter and that he recently signed up for Twitter. He also gives useful information on how to attract followers. Overall, I really like this blog. But I am opposed to Twitter in general. If you are interested in understanding what Twitter is, read Quentin’s blog; for further information read this Wikipedia entry, or watch this Youtube video “Twitter in Plain English:”
“Within hours, she began to see a different side of people she chose to follow. She didn’t know that Steven in Seattle was a baseball fan. Or that Julia in London was reading a new investment book. The little messages from Twitter painted a picture of her friends, family, and co-workers she had not seen before. It was the real world.” This quote is taken from the Youtube video.
Well, I am not a fan of Twitter and oppose it. “It is the real world.” Oh, thanks to micro-blogging and Twitter we finally found the real world! Hold on a minute. My point of view is somewhat reverse: Thanks to Twitter, we loose that real world! I had a drink with a friend who recently signed up for Twitter. While we had beer and talked he suddenly got his phone out and put a message on Twitter that he is having a beer with a friend at the Front Page bar. Well, on the way back he tweeted about the rain and snow showers and that the weather outside is really nasty. Mmh, welcome to the real world!? No, but who cares! And most importantly: while we were walking back he was more into his phone than talking to me. Cool, so that’s our new world: Instead of following his online conversation he could have had a real-world conversation with me. And that’s the problem with the new digital communications world: I am (and now I sound like my grandfather) afraid that some digital fans loose their ability to socially interact in the real world. I just think society will not gain more information from Twitter. I think microblogging is also a great danger for our information society, in terms of time available to spend with media. Instead of spending some more time with watching the evening news or reading a newspaper, we waste much of our daytime with microblogging. Even though Twitter is not supposed to replace journalism, many people spend more time on Twitter than with their TV channel or newspaper (print or online). And Twitter will never replace journalism, since 140 characters are not enough to get into detail. I don’t know, but selecting news is a dangerous concept for me. And that’s how Twitter works: You select people, you want to follow. And there are some extremes: On Tweetwasters you can check how much time you waste with Twitter – just type in your username. By the way, a guy called Sugree from NYC is placed first with 3,445,860 Seconds or 40 days (!) non-stop (!!) twittering! If you look for more detailed information on how to waste your time with micro-blogging, check out the techcrunch article.
Again, I like social media a lot. And I think blogging, Wikipedia, the concept of Wisdom of the crowds, Facebook, etc are great. But some people have to be aware not loose the feeling for the real world. Let’s meet and have a coffee or beer together. Not online. But in real world.
